Tesco beefs up board with two new non-executive directors

(Adds detail, analyst comment, shares)

LONDON, Oct 6 (Reuters) - Tesco (Xetra: 852647 - news) has hired two new non-executive directors, adding retail and international experience to its board and addressing one of the criticisms of Britain's biggest supermarket group following an accounting scandal last month.

The company said on Monday Richard Cousins, chief executive of catering group Compass, and Mikael Ohlsson, the former boss of furniture retailer IKEA, would join its board on Nov. 1.

The appointments come two weeks after Tesco said it had overstated first half profit by 250 million pounds ($400 million).

That oversight led to the suspension of four senior Tesco executives, the calling in of forensic accountants and lawyers to find out what went wrong and a 4 billion pounds drop in the grocer's market value.

"Mikael and Richard have been updated on and are wholly supportive of the steps being taken by the new management team to rebuild trust in Tesco and to focus all the resources of the business to deliver value to our customers," said Tesco chairman Richard Broadbent.

Cousins has been CEO of Compass since 2006 and is a former non-executive director of consumer goods group Reckitt Benckiser (Xetra: A0M1W6 - news) . Ohlsson worked for IKEA for 34 years and was CEO from 2009 to 2013.

Analysts welcomed the appointments to a board which had been criticised for failing to challenge management and a lack of retail experience.

Shore Capital's Clive Black said both new recruits were highly regarded by investors.

"Non-executive directors rarely put pennies into the tills but in this instance we welcome the joint appointments and hope that it represents the recommencement of more effective governance of Tesco," he said.

He added that he saw scope for wide-ranging changes to Tesco's board, including more executives, more changes to the non-executives and a new chairman.

Broadbent, chairman for almost three years, was a former public official and banker. Others on the board have experience in telecoms, media, finance and cars, while Patrick Cescau, the board's senior independent director, is a former chairman of Unilever (NYSE: UL - news) , one of Tesco's biggest suppliers.

Tesco's new chief executive Dave Lewis, who joined from Unilever on Sept. 1, is due to update the market on the progress of the investigation into the accounting scandal on Oct. 23, when the firm will also publish interim results.

Shares (Berlin: DI6.BE - news) in Tesco, down 47 percent this year, were up 2.4 percent at 176.2 pence by 1000 GMT, valuing the firm at 14.5 billion pounds.

(1 US dollar = 0.6257 British pound) (Reporting by James Davey; Editing by Neil Maidment and Mark Potter)