Talk:John Lewis Partnership

Legal structure

Does anyone know any more about the legal structure of John Lewis? Is it actually a co-operative? Secretlondon 12:44, Dec 3, 2003 (UTC)

Its a PLC so it issues shares. Secretlondon 12:46, Dec 3, 2003 (UTC). But it claims to be run by its employees - and gives a 'dividend' to them. Bah - its not a straight-forward co-operative (it would be an Industrial and Provident society under British Law - not a PLC). It's hybrid - and I'm confused. ;) Secretlondon 12:51, Dec 3, 2003 (UTC)

John Lewis Partnership PLC is a public unquoted company that wholly own John Lewis PLC and a bunch of about 25 limited companies such as Waitrose Limited, John Lewis Car Finance Ltd etc. As at 31/01/2003 they had shareholder funds of about £1.4bn or about £25,000 per employee. Distribution of shares is (probably) proportional to annual pay [1]. Total dividend payout appears to be £200,000 or £4 per employee for year to 31/01/2003.... these seems too low... I clearly don't know how to read financial statements!

As for the power, as opposed to corporate, structure... see the external link in the article Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 14:07, 3 Dec 2003 (UTC)

The reason for the £200,000 pound dividend payment is because in the early post war era the company was very short of funds and had to issue shares to raise some capital. Instead of issuing ordinary shares (where you own part of the company) they issued preference shares instead. These give you a right to a fixed dividend but don't give you any voting or other rights in the company.

Corperate structure is roughly as follows, John Lewis Partnership is a PLC, but all the shares(with the exeption of the afforementioned preferance shares) are owned by the a Trust set up by the Founder for the benefit of the employees. The profits are distributed in cash (well bank transfer) anually around the end of March, as a percentage of salary. The percentage varies each year the highest recently was around 22%, the lowest about 8%. The issue of the preferance shares should be largely ignored, they are entirely insignificant in the structure of the company.

Senior people in a coop where I was a member Poptel comented that JL is realy a Co-op but doesn't use the term.

And Poptel the company was owned by the coop via a complex trust

Question: Does that complex trust truly contain clauses related to the death of kings? I refer you to this interesting quote from http://www.newstatesman.com/199911150025:

If the demutualisers take the long view, they could decide to wait till the present trust expires, which it does 21 years after the death of the last surviving descendant of King Edward VII who was alive in 1929 - namely, the Queen and the Earl of Harewood. For customers of the 25 department stores and 118 Waitrose food shops, the worry must be whether the homage to Spedan Lewis will not, eventually, cause the same kinds of fatal delay in innovation that did for the Co-op as a serious movement. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.118.251.61 (talk) 11:08, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

I suspect that JL is not a true cooperative! If it was, JL would emphasise that each employee had equal voting share. As far as I can see they only say things like "everybody has a say". Therefore I guess that power is very unequally distributed amongst employees. Of course I hope that I am wrong and that one of you tells me so. —Preceding comment added by --Turifo (talk) 20:43, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Confusing text for Southampton

I've removed the following annotation from the Southampton entry:

(under the Tyrrell & Green name until the move to West Quay in 1998, then opened in 2000)

because it doesn't make meaningful sense. Are we saying the store traded as Tyrell & Green both before 1998 and after 2000, but traded as John Lewis in the short interim. Or did it move to West Quay in 1998, but for some strange reason didn't reopen for two years after the move. Or what?. If you know enough to rewrite this annotation in english, please feel free to do so and reinstate. -- Chris j wood 15:50, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

I do not believe it traded as Tyrell & Green post-2000 and JohnLewis.com lists it as JL Southhampton --Davidprior 07:57, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Question on logo usage

Two quite different (in colour and font) John Lewis logos (Image:JLlogo.PNG and Image:JLPlogo.PNG} have been added to this article. Neither image page has a description. Does the John Lewis Partnership still use both, or is one historic?. If both are in use, what decides which is used where?. -- Chris j wood 13:52, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

JLlogo is the logo of the shop. The font matches that shown in the shop sign in the photo (which was taken very recently). JLPlogo is the logo of the partnership (the company that ownes the John Lewis stores, among other things). This is the logo used on their webpage (http://www.johnlewispartnership.co.uk/). Note that when that webpage refers to the store specifically, they use JLlogo. So both are current, and I think both are sensible things to have in the article. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 14:00, August 19, 2005 (UTC)

I thought that might be the case from the placement in the article, but didn't want to jump to conclusions. I've updated the captions and image descriptions to reflect this. I agree both are sensible to have, but I'm just wondering if it may be better to have two articles. One on the John Lewis department store chain, and one on the John Lewis Partnership as owners of that chain, Waitrose, etc. -- Chris j wood 14:39, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

That makes sense, but I don't know how much there is to write about the partnership, though. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 14:44, August 19, 2005 (UTC)

The changeover of names was virtually instant, the partnership's presence in Southampton prior to it's move into the West Quay shopping centre was in a building that dates back to before World War Two. It was certainly called "Tyrell & Green" until it's closure, which, as I say was the day before the opening of the new location down the road. The building is still empty to this day, unfortunate for a building closed down in the last millenia -- D Hockey | Talk 03:02, November 30, 2006 (UTC)

Typo in Revenue?

A revenue of about £5 million in 2005? Shurely Shome Mishtake. That works out at around £70 annual revenue per employee. --Gantlord 18:51, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Former location - Warrington

I have removed the last entry by user 212.219.95.3 as it is incorrect. I think it might be a minor violation. -- AndrewSE19 10:18, 22 September 2006

All the revenue figures are wrong/misleading

The numbers shown are gross sales (including VAT), not revenue. Gross sales figures are widely used in the retail industry, but they are not comparable to figures for non-retail businesses and it is misleading to give them as the only figure here. I don't have time to correct this just now. Cotterstock (talk) 20:52, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Update

Greenbee has changed to John Lewis insurance. Some parts of Greenbee still exist, some are being phased out, or removed with plans to bring back at a later date. Greenbee no longer exists. This is why I added the Update tag. I will do it myself, given some time, but I am currently working on the John Lewis (department store) page.

DrMotley (talk) 18:57, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Partnership Democracy

As a former long-serving employee of John Lewis, and indeed a Partner who served on a number of their internal democratic bodies, I can assure you first-hand that said democratic bodies are entirely powerless talking-shops (at least at the lower echelons). They have no power whatsoever to influence John Lewis policy, or the direction of the business. Only topics pre-approved by management are up for discussion, and the only resolutions passed are those that can be implemented with a minimum of fuss or expense (for example, regarding the sort of sandwich fillings that are available in the canteen). The sole purpose of these "democratic" bodies is to give the illusion to "rank and file" employees, and external observers that the John Lewis Partnership is in some way a caring, progressive and inclusive organisation, whereas in fact they treat their employees with a good deal more contempt than most.