In the midst of the recession of the mid-1980s , Managing Director Ian McLaurin became chairman and ushered in a new management team that changed tesco and its market position radically. Relying on a cohort of young, talented executives with a tesco background and an innate understanding of the UK consumer market (Potts and the current and past CEOs Phillip Clarke and terry Leahy), MaLaurin made tesco into a store to meet all shopper is needs. In fact, tesco crushed the competition, including the Walmart-backed Asda, in the UK market