Sir Leahy became a senior advisor to CD&R in 2011 and is based in London. In his 32-year career at Tesco plc, Sir Leahy helped to transform the company into the third-largest retailer in the world, serving in several senior positions including CEO from 1997 to 2011. During his CEO tenure, Tesco quadrupled both sales and profits, and expanded into new products, store formats, lines of business, and geographies. Sir Leahy was chancellor of UMIST, his alma mater, from 2002 until 2004, when he became a co-chancellor of the newly-formed University of Manchester.