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Philip Clarke (businessman)

British businessman and former CEO of Tesco

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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 31, 2026
Entity authorityQ163222 ↗
Source-derived summary

Philip Andrew Clarke (born 8 March 1960) is a British businessman. He served as the chief executive officer of Tesco plc until 1 September 2014.

Biography

Early life

He was born in Liverpool, where his father was a Tesco store manager on the Wirral for many years, and gave Clarke his first job as a schoolboy in 1974.

He was educated at the Liverpool Blue Coat School and went on to graduate with an economics degree from the University of Liverpool.

Career

Having initially stacked shelves at his local Tesco, he returned after graduating to join the Tesco Management Training Programme in 1981. Appointed to the Board of Directors in 1998, he then went on to replace Sir Terry Leahy in 2011. He sits on the board of directors of the Consumer Goods Forum.

In July 2014, Philip announced that he was leaving Tesco's board, effective 1 October 2014, which was brought forward to 1 September 2014.

Clarke was due to have a party celebrating 40 years at Tesco but this was cancelled the day before suggesting that the departure came sooner than expected. His leaving came after a disastrous 3 years overseeing the company's first profit warning in 20 years, and an accounting scandal in 2014.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Philip Clarke (businessman)” as british businessman and former CEO of Tesco. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Philip, Clarke and businessman.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1960, 2014, 1974, 1981—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1960-03-08. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Philip, Clarke and businessman providing the first useful test.
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A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Philip Clarke (businessman)”, the useful work is to connect “british businessman and former CEO of Tesco” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q163222. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1960, 2014, 1974 and 1981.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Philip Clarke (businessman)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.