Co-op CEO Calls It a Day After Toxic Culture Storm and a Year Nobody Wants to Repeat

When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going (Literally)

Shirine Khoury-Haq has stepped down as CEO of the Co-op Group, and honestly, after the year she has had, you could hardly blame her for wanting a quiet lie-down. Her departure, effective 29 March 2026, was announced alongside the group's full-year 2025 results. Those results, it must be said, make for spectacularly grim reading.

The exit comes roughly a month after the BBC reported claims of a toxic workplace culture at the top of the organisation. An anonymous letter sent to Co-op board members painted a picture of fear and alienation among senior staff, with one particularly memorable quote: "You learn to look at your shoes. Nobody can speak their mind." The Co-op, for its part, said at the time it did not recognise those claims. Funny how quickly things can change.

The Numbers Tell Their Own Story

If the culture allegations lit the fuse, the financials were the powder keg. The Co-op posted an unaudited annual loss of £126 million for 2025, nearly triple the £45 million loss recorded in 2024. Group revenue slipped 2.3% to just over £11 billion, and debt ballooned from £55 million to a rather eye-watering £317 million.

Market share also took a knock, drifting from 5.4% in August 2025 down to 5% by January 2026. None of these are the sort of figures you put on a motivational poster.

That Cyber Attack, Though

A significant chunk of the financial damage traces back to a devastating cyber attack in April 2025. The breach was not some minor inconvenience. It hammered the business to the tune of £285 million in lost revenue across the full year, with a £107 million hit to profitability. Funeral homes were forced back to paper-based operations. Store shelves sat empty. And the personal data of all 6.5 million Co-op members was stolen.

For context, the half-year interim results had already flagged £206 million in lost sales from the attack alone. The full-year picture only got worse.

Cost Pressures Piled On

As if a crippling cyber attack and a leadership crisis were not enough, the Co-op also faced approximately £150 million in cost headwinds. That figure includes £47 million from National Insurance increases and Extended Producer Responsibility charges. When it rains, it absolutely buckets down.

Who Picks Up the Pieces?

Kate Allum, a member-nominated director on the Co-op Board, has been appointed as interim group CEO from 30 March 2026. She inherits a business that needs steadying in almost every department.

Khoury-Haq served four years as chief executive and nearly seven years at the Co-op in total. Whatever your view on her tenure, the scale of challenges thrown at the organisation during that period was genuinely extraordinary. A once-in-a-generation cyber attack, a cost-of-living squeeze, regulatory headwinds, and then allegations about the very culture she was responsible for setting.

What Happens Next

The Co-op still has ambitious plans, including a target of reaching 10 million active members by 2030 and a network of nearly 8,000 stores across its own estate and partners. Whether those targets survive contact with reality is another question entirely.

For now, the priority will be restoring confidence, both internally and externally. Staff who felt they had to stare at their shoes need to feel they can look up again. And members whose data was compromised need reassurance that the organisation has its house in order.

It has been, by any measure, a bruising chapter. The next one had better be a page-turner for all the right reasons.

Read the original article at source.