Morrisons: Photo by Elliott Brown, Flickr.

Ailing supermarket chain Morrisons is to get a new audit committee leader in Belinda Richards, to serve under chairman Andrew Higginson. Richards is also audit committee chairman at property company Grainger plc. She joins at a difficult time for Morrisons.

The new chief executive, David Potts, joined in the spring but the scale of his task was outlined in preliminary results published in March. Turnover was down almost 5% to £16.8bn, but pre-tax profits were down 52% to £345m.

Potts has already warned that price deflation will continue to affect the business.

Morrisons remains the fourth-largest grocery business in the country behind Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury’s.

Competitiveness in the market place was outlined in April when Aldi moved to overtake the sales of Waitrose to become sixth, just behind The Co-op.

Richards is also a non-executive at Aviva UK Life & Pensions, and serves on the advisory group of audit committee chairmen to the Financial Reporting Council.

She has 25 years’ experience in professional services, advising on corporate finance and strategy.