Tesco sent extra stocks to bail out M&S during cyberattack
Britain's biggest supermarket stepped in to supply extra stocks of Marmite and Coca-Cola to Marks & Spencer while it was hit by a crippling cyberattack, its boss has revealed.
Ken Murphy, chief executive of Tesco, said that M&S and some of the Co-Op's independent societies asked Booker, Tesco's wholesale arm, for support sourcing products while their supply systems were down.
'Over the period when they've been impacted, Booker has supplied both M&S and Co-op with products and supported them in any way they could,' he said. 'They asked us to supply products and we said yes.'
In M&S's case, Booker is understood to have increased deliveries of third-party branded items, such as the household staples Marmite and Coca-Cola, and shipped more items directly to shops.
The main Co-op Group did not request assistance for its supermarkets but it is understood that some of its independent societies temporarily turned to Booker. Independent Co-op societies are consumer co-operatives that operate independently within the Co-operative Group while maintaining their own distinct ownership and governance.
The support was short term and both companies have since restored their operations after the cyberattack.
M&S was arguably the worst affected: its online business was knocked offline for nearly two months. It has warned that the attack was likely to dent its profits this year by at least £300 million.
M&S relaunched its website this week and resumed online orders, prompting a surge of customer demand. Many shoppers had left items in their online baskets, ready to buy once the site came back online. The company declined to comment on which products had proved most popular since the relaunch.
The request for support from Britain's largest supermarket highlights the severity of the disruption and also reflects a rare moment of collaboration in the competitive grocery sector.
Tesco, which reported an increase in like-for-like sales over the past three months, insisted that this had not been because of the cyberattacks at M&S and Co-Op. 'We haven't seen any uptick in activity or attacks since some of our competitors were attacked,' Murphy said. 'We haven't seen any material changes.'
He emphasised that cybersecurity was at the 'top of my inbox on a daily, weekly basis'.
'We stay on top of cyber all the time. We have invested continuously in upgrading our cyber-capabilities because this is a moving target all the time. As the sophistication of potential attackers improves, we have to keep investing behind it.
'We stay very vigilant. We invest substantially behind it. We seek to learn from what's going on in the industry,' Murphy said.
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