Stuart Rose: from hero to zero

When Sir Stuart Rose and his fellow directors walked onto the stage at the Marks & Spencer annual shareholders meeting two years ago, they were greeted with spontaneous and rapturous applause. The share price had passed £6 on its way to £7 and the new range of £5 T-shirts were selling faster than punnets of strawberries in the food halls.

Rose had revived the group's fortunes and put the nation's trust back in the brand. Analysts were once more forecasting profits of £1bn a year ­ - not seen since 1998.

Yet despite M&S hitting that target, on Wednesday at the Royal Festival Hall Rose will face the most hostile audience of shareholders in his four-year tenure. A quarter of them have pledged to vote against him becoming executive chairman and the rest simply want

to know what has gone wrong.

Since the shock announcement last week that M&S comparable food sales had fallen by five per cent in the last three months, and the abrupt departure of former Waitrose boss Steve Esom as head of food after a year in the job, the share price has cratered by more than 30 per cent to 212p, just over half what Sir Philip Green, the Topshop magnate, offered for the company in the summer of 2004. Profit forecasts for this year have been slashed to £700m and there are whispers of a dividend cut.

Rose, who began his career at M&S and made his name turning round Debenhams and Arcadia, is the third boss of Marks & Spencer to make the journey from hero to zero in the past decade. After achieving the magical £1bn two years running, Sir Richard Greenbury was forced to step