Ex-Tesco chairman hits at Leahy "legacy" Lord MacLaurin, the former chairman of Tesco, has launched a stinging attack on the legacy left by Sir Terry Leahy, and called for the current chief executive of Tesco to be given more time to turn round Britain's biggest retailer. In a surprise appearance at Tesco's annual meeting in London, Lord McLaurin said the legacy of Sir Terry, who he appointed as chief executive in 1997, was a "sad situation." "When you judge the performance of a chief executive, you not only judge the performance of his day-to-day operation, but you also have to judge his legacy, and I think we are all very sad in this hall to see the legacy that Terry Leahy left," he said. Lord MacLaurin's dramatic interjection represents the most significant criticism to date of Sir Terry, who transformed Tesco from a struggling domestic retailer to an assertive international brand. In March 2011, Sir Terry was succeeded by Philip Clarke in Tesco's biggest management transition in 14 years. But less than a year later, Mr Clarke warned on profits and, in April, called time on Sir Terry's American dream, with a £1bn writedown. "It's a very sad situation, your enormous writedowns and the situation in the US, which is very sad," said Lord MacLaurin. The retailer's former chairman - who was credited with transforming what was a "pile it high, sell it cheap" basic food retailer into the UK's largest supermarket business - also asked shareholders that Mr Clarke be given more time to try to revive Tesco's UK performance. "We live in an age of short-termism," Lord MacLaurin said. This company is not going to turn it around quickly, and what I would ask your board to consider, [and] the institutions that are looking at investing, [is] that Philip and his team has time. Its not going to happen overnight. This job is going to be two to three years. If you go back to the early 90s, when Sainsbury was going through a similar problem, it took them five to six years to reposition. But some shareholders at the sometimes ill-tempered meeting attacked the failed US venture and the cost of withdrawing, as well as the poor performance in Tesco's domestic market. John Farmer, a private shareholder, said Tesco had "bungled" its entry to the US. He said Tesco had made an "egregious mistake in the US, aggravated by a headlong rush to open more stores when early ones were manifestly not working." Tesco is in talks to sell the US venture, with Yucaipa Companies, the investment firm run by billionaire Ron Burkle, thought to be the frontrunner to acquire it.