Tesco is reviewing its financial PR account and has invited a host of City agencies in to pitch.
The account is held by Financial Dynamics but the retirement last month of deputy chairman George Welham - who oversaw the Tesco work - has led to a rethink in its corporate affairs department.
Corporate affairs director Lucy Neville-Rolfe, who has been with Tesco for three years, after two decades in the civil service, said: 'We routinely look at areas of our roster and are now looking at financial agencies,' She is understood to be seeing agencies currently without a supermarket client.
Neville-Rolfe is implementing a shake-up of the entire corporate affairs team, of which the FD review is a part. Before there was what she termed 'a mish-mash of structures'. She has now divided her remit into six 'streams' and is creating new posts to assist Tesco's global and non-food expansion plans.
In the first of the six streams, she has created a communications director role to slot in above the existing media relations manager David Sawday.
This role, for which Sawday is being considered, will oversee internal communications.
The next stream sees Tesco's second media relations manager Nicole Lander temporarily move to a newly-created international corporate affairs post.
In the third, Neville-Rolfe is modifying the role vacated by Bernard Hughes moving to Edelman and terming it government and industry affairs manager to deal with Brussels, Westminster and competition issues. The five-strong team working on Tesco's submission to the Competition Commission's supermarkets enquiry is to be disbanded.
Fiona Archer becomes corporate social responsibility manager in the fourth stream, while Neville-Rolfe has hired Martin Venning as property communications manager as the fifth. The final stream sees investor relations director Steve Butler's role unchanged.
