I was in London two weeks ago for my medical procedures when my wife showed me a newspaper article from The Evening Standard on an announcement by the CEO of Sainsbury on his future plans on store consolidation. So I decided to text the CEO, Mike Coupe, if he could spare some time for an interview.

Mike and I were classmates in the same living group that attended the Advanced Management Program (AMP 182) in Harvard Business School back in 2012. He was the group commercial director at the time and I remembered our long standing arguments on the bullying tactics of chain store buyers on their suppliers.