Malcolm Walker's biography
Malcolm Walker is an entrepreneur to his fingertips. Born in Yorkshire in 1946, his first venture was as a dance promoter while he was still at grammar school. Leaving without conspicuous academic qualifications, he immediately identified retailing as the way to make his fortune, and began work as a trainee manager at Woolworths. Iceland was founded as a sideline in 1970 witha single small shop in Oswestry selling loose frozen food, and a starting capital of just £30.
Malcolm has only ever had three paid jobs, and so far he’s been fired from two of them. Discovery of his extracurricular interest in frozen food prompted his dismissal by Woolworths in 1971, but luckily this provided the catalyst for a rapid expansion of Iceland into a national chain which by 2000 had £2 billion of sales, 22,000 employees and over 700 shops. Malcolm was Chairman and Chief Executive through 30 years of continuous sales growth, in all but one of which the company also increased its profits.
Following the acquisition of the Booker cash and carry business in April 2000, Iceland became a food group with sales of £5.5 billion. Malcolm was fired for the second time in his life in January 2001, and responded by founding his second new frozen food retail business, Cooltrader. Meanwhile Iceland, renamed The Big Food Group, floundered under its new management for four painful years, losing focus, sales and market share to become one of those companies that cannot be mentioned in the press without the adjective ‘troubled’.
The Big Food Group was rescued from severe financial difficulties by a takeover in February 2005, when Malcolm returned to Iceland as Chief Executive Officer and a member of the consortium that took the company private. Under his leadership the morale and performance of the business have been transformed to make Iceland once again one of the most remarkable success stories in UK food retailing.
In the six years after Malcolm’s return, Iceland’s like-for-like sales grew by more than 50% and its profitability was fully restored, with net profit in the financial year to March 2011 increasing by 14.8% to £155.5 million and EBITDA reaching a record £187.9 million. Over the same period Iceland also transformed pay and conditions to make its front line retail staff among the best paid on the high street. This is reflected in the annual Sunday TimesBest Companies survey, which named Iceland as the Best Big Company to Work For in the UK in 2012, after first featuring in the survey in 14th place in 2009 and climbing to sixth placein2011. Iceland now employs more than 23,000 people in the UK, having created some 4,000 new jobs through the opening of more than 100new stores over the last fouryears.
In March 2012 Malcolm again became Chairman & Chief Executive of Iceland after leading a successful £1.45 billion management buyout with the support of three new equity investors who share Malcolm’s commitment to “doing the right thing” for the long term and preserving Iceland’s unique ethos and culture.
Malcolm is proud of Iceland’s exceptional record of raising more than £8.5 million for good causes over the last 25 years, including £3 million for the Alder Hey Children’s Hospital Imagine Appeal and £1.5 million for Help for Heroes, the company’s Charity of the Year for 2010. In spring 2011 Malcolm and his son Richard climbed 23,000ft to the North Col of Everest as part of the Iceland Everest Expedition to begin the fundraising campaign for the company’s current Charity of the Year, Alzheimer’s Research UK (ARUK), for which more than £1.2 million has been raised to date. ARUK will again be Iceland’s Charity of the Year in 2012/13.
Malcolm was awarded the CBE in 1995. He has been married to Rhianydd for more than 40 years, and still can’t pronounce her name. They have three grown-up children and seven grandchildren, and live near Chester. Malcolm has many other business interests ranging from food manufacturing to restaurants and property. Outside work, his greatest enthusiasms are for his home, garden and family, good food and wine, ski-ing, sailing and shooting.
