Morrisons group retail director David Lepley has resigned from his role at the supermarket.

The Telegraph reports that the departure of Lepley, who served at the company for nearly eight years, is part of new chief exec Rami Baitiéh’s strategy to turnaround the grocer.

Lepley started his career at Asda in 2005, joining Morrisons in 2016. He was reportedly close to joining M&S in 2019, but he was instead promoted to operations director before being made group retail director the following year.

Morrisons has not commented on Lepley’s departure, and the Telegraph reports that it is not clear whether there will be a replacement.

The retailer has struggled to remain competitive with German discount grocers Lidl and Aldi since it was sold to Clayton, Dubilier & Rice for £7 billion in 2022. The company last year hired Baitiéh to replace David Potts, with the former Carrefour boss promising to “reinvigorate” the business which has fallen “below the pack”.

Speaking last month, Baitiéh said: “I must be very direct. Since the pandemic, Morrisons has not been on peak form. Our market share has slipped slowly but consistently, our like-for-likes - although an improving and encouraging trend - have been below the pack for a while and the switching data has not been encouraging.”

The company last week announced the sale of 337 petrol forecourts to Motor Fuel Group, also owned by CD&R, in a deal worth £2.5 billion.

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