Sir Terry Leahy checks out

Tesco has confirmed that Sir Terry Leahy’s last day with the retailer will be Wednesday. From then on, it will be new chief executive Philip Clarke manning the till.

Sir Terry will be checking out with the gift of an antique cash register from the Tesco board. Originally from the US, it was made in the year Tesco started – 1919.

Mr Clarke, meanwhile, will be hoping that a little of the Tesco first-day magic rubs off on him on his debut at the helm of UK’s biggest retailer.

On Tesco’s first day of trading, Jack Cohen’s market stall in the east end of London made £1 profit on £4 of sales.

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Bitter pill

Pfizer chief Ian Read followed the example of fellow US company boss Irene Rosenfeld of Kraft in leaving a House of Commons select committee appearance to subordinates.

Oliver Brandicourt of the drug group’s primary care unit, Ruth McKernan, head of Pfizer’s Sandwich site, Rod MacKenzie of worldwide research and Pfizer UK managing director Richard Blackburn faced the grilling by MPs on the science and technology committee on the closure of its R&D site.

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Missed goal

Has Seymour Pierce chairman Keith Harris lost his touch? Known in the City for his big football deals, including the sale of Chelsea to Roman Abramovich, Mr Harris was supposed to become the head of Gerova, the US-listed reinsurer, after the UK stockbroker had completed an agreed merger.

But the Gerova deal was called off last Friday after a plunge in the US group’s share price and growing concerns about the value of some of its assets. The collapse of the deal comes as an attempt by the “Red Knights” – led by Mr Harris and other City figures including Goldman Sachs’ Jim O’Neill – to buy Manchester United from the Glazer family has gone nowhere.

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New Look new hire

Some retailers are turning to new blood in the face of a looming retail recession.

New Look is bolstering its team by hiring Primark’s buying and merchandising director Julian Kilmartin, who moved to the bargain retailer from Marks and Spencer in 2009. New Look, however, is losing Barbara Horspool, its design director who is also an M&S alumnus, to Oasis.

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Bare cheek

It seems synchronised nude dancing still has some way to go before it is accepted into the pantheon of corporate entertainment.

Last month, guests at Lord Mayor Michael Bear’s charity bash looked on as avant garde dance duo The Two Wrongies performed a three-minute naked dance to Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody as a prelude to the main course of beef and oysters.

Some guests enjoyed the show enough to film it on camera phones, but others evidently found it a little bit too much and wasted no time in making Gensler, the architects that threw the 60s-themed party, aware of their displeasure.

In a letter to guests on Monday, Gensler relayed its “sincere apologies to anyone who may have been offended by some of the evening’s entertainment”.

However, the evening ended in success, with the auction raising £61,000 ($99,000) for the Lord Mayor’s charity of choice, Bear Necessities, or should that be Bare Necessities?

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Power Player: Nigel Newton, Bloomsbury founder

Bloomsbury Publishing founder and chief Nigel Newton may have found an answer to his challenge to find new sources of revenue since the last Harry Potter book hit the shelves, writes Esther Bintliff.

The San Francisco-born 55-year-old is trying to balance the volatility in fiction and non-fiction sales by diversifying into academic and professional publishing, including a joint venture with the Qatar Foundation. The tall and softly spoken Mr Newton is also focusing on exploiting the fast-growing market for e-books and has reshaped Bloomsbury, streamlining its multiple geographic offices into four worldwide divisions.

Mr Newton read English at Cambridge and worked for publishers Macmillan and Sidgwick & Jackson before founding Bloomsbury in 1986. The publisher struck gold when the father of three asked his daughter to read a story about a boy wizard; her approval led to the publication of JK Rowling’s Potter series, a move that proved magical to Bloomsbury’s revenues.

An avid reader, Mr Newton recently read Justin Cartwright’s novel Other People’s Money. He is president of BookAid International, which gives books to Africa, and chairs The Charleston Trust, which runs the East Sussex country home of the Bloomsbury Group.

people@ft.com