Lord Rose of Monewden, the chairman of Asda, has said he is “embarrassed” by the supermarket’s declining market share and has called on its owner Mohsin Issa to step back from running the retail chain.

Britain’s third largest supermarket reported a decline in quarterly revenues last week of 2.2 per cent and a 5.3 per cent drop in like-for-like sales. Figures from Kantar, an industry body, show that Asda’s market share has shrunk from 13.6 per cent to 12.7 per cent, losing ground to rivals including Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons.

“I am going to be perfectly honest with you. I’ve been in this industry for a long time and I am slightly embarrassed. I won’t deny that,” Rose told The Telegraph. “I don’t like being second, third or fourth. And if you look honestly now at the comparative numbers of Kantar or whatever index, we are not performing as well as should be. I don’t like that.”

Asda is 67.5 per cent-owned by TDR Capital, a private equity firm, with Mohsin Issa, 53, holding 22.5 per cent. This year Zuber Issa, 52, Mohsin’s brother, sold his 22.5 per cent stake to TDR to focus on his other businesses. Asda previously was owned by Walmart, the American retail group. The Issa brothers and the private equity firm bought the chain for £6.8 billion in 2021. Walmart retains a 10 per cent holding.

Rose, 75, the former chairman of Marks & Spencer, said that Mohsin Issa should step away from the daily running of Asda as the supermarket aims to revive its performance. “I wouldn’t encourage him to [intervene in operations], and I am the chairman,” he said.

“We always said Mohsin was a particular horse for a particular course. He is a disrupter, an entrepreneur, he is an agitator. We’ve added a significant number of stores and we’ve changed a lot, but it now needs a different animal. In the nicest possible way, Mohsin’s work is largely complete.”

Last week Michael Gleeson, the chief financial officer at Asda, set out plans to invest in improving Asda’s store estate, adding more staff hours to ensure that shelves were replenished more quickly and to build customer loyalty.