The Era of Finance CEOs Running Retailers Is Over

Bad in-store experiences have been, in a certain sense, the defining retail trend of the past 15 years. Between understaffing, locked-up products, metastasizing self-checkout kiosks and endless nudges to shop online, it’s begun to feel like some retailers resent the necessity of hosting customers at all. Wouldn’t it be more efficient and cost-effective, in the end, to operate something more like a big vending machine?

By the time Covid-19 hit, brick-and-mortar chains of all sorts—department stores, drugstores, big boxes, mall brands—had clumsily weed-whacked their in-store operations. They closed scores of locations, starved remaining ones of staff and resources, and filled shelves with cheaper, lower-quality goods their buyers wouldn’t have tolerated in decades past. This transformation is a symptom of what Bloomberg Opinion columnist Beth Kowitt describes as “the revenge of the bean counters.” Across industries, career bankers and financiers have taken control of a growing number of companies, appointed by boards searching for a steady hand in turbulent times or installed by private equity owners to wring more profit from businesses.