THE chairman of the Royal Mail, Allan Leighton, is to stand down from the role by next March.

The former Asda supermarkets boss will be involved in the hunt for his successor, working in tandem with the Zygos Partnership, a headhunting firm.

Leighton has been chairman of the state-owned postal service since March 2002, having joined the organisation as a nonexecutive director the previous year.

He is understood to have been considering plans to step down since the spring but delayed a decision while attempting to resolve the row over postal workers’ pension rights.

With that dispute now settled, and a programme of modernisation firmly in place, Leighton feels that now is an appropriate time to begin the search for his successor.

In an interview with The Sunday Times in April this year, Leighton said: “The business is in much better shape than it was. We’ve gone from being a very unprofitable business, losing £1m a day, to being a profitable business.”

His tenure has not been withour controversy. The row over pensions provoked a bitter outcry from the Communications Workers Union, which launched the first national strike in a decade during the autumn of 2007 in protest at the changes.

Royal Mail has also attracted criticism over the scale of postoffice closures, with a programme under way to shut 2,500 of the current 13,500-strong branch network.

Management has defended the closures by saying they need to happen for the network to become profitable.

Leighton, who famously announced he would “go plural” after leaving Asda, has steadily reduced the number of boardroom posts that he holds in the last few years.

He continues to serve as a nonexecutive director at George Weston, the Canadian food group, and at BSkyB, the satellite broadcaster in which News Corporation, ultimate owner of The Sunday Times, has a 39% stake.

It is thought that Leighton, who is good at turning companies round, may still have an appetite for a big corporate venture.

Last year Sir Philip Hampton, chairman of J Sainsbury, the supermarket chain, was heavily tipped to succeed Leighton but he was too distracted by the aborted takeover approach in which his company was involved.

Whoever becomes chairman of Royal Mail will have to be approved by the government. There are a number of nonexecutive directors who may be interested in taking the post, but the idea is to canvas outside interest as well.

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