THE world’s biggest retail corporation, which is under fire from environmentalists, trade unions and community leaders, has enlisted an unlikely champion to try to improve its image.

Lee Scott, the chief executive of Wal-Mart, which owns Asda, the second-biggest retailer in Britain, had a two-hour meeting with the Prince of Wales at Clarence House.

Mr Scott is desperate to transform the image of the monolithic retail organisation, which has a history of building huge superstores on the edge of towns on greenfield sites and squashing competition with an aggressive pricing policy. He turned to the Prince, a champion of green causes whose own lavish lifestyle often comes in for criticism, for advice on how to make his company more environmentally friendly and to give it more consumer appeal.

Only one week after the meeting with the Prince, a Californian court awarded £115 million to thousands of Wal-Mart employees who alleged that they were illegally and systematically denied lunchbreaks. The company has been fighting allegations for years, in and out of court, that it cuts corners to keep labour costs low.

Shares have fallen 15 per cent in the past year as sales growth slowed in America after community groups staged a series of protests across the country to block new shop developments in New York City and Los Angeles. The company was dealt another public relations blow with the release of a documentary, Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, produced and directed by Robert Greenwald, a prominent Hollywood liberal activist.

Mr Scott approached the Prince, whom he met at a White House banquet last year, after being impressed by the work of a British architectural designer with the Prince of Wales’s Foundation for the Built Environment in rebuilding work after Hurricane Katrina. At least one Wal-Mart superstore was destroyed by the hurricane.

The Prince, who is acutely aware of the bad public relations profile of Wal-Mart, decided to go ahead with the meeting because it was a rare chance to meet the head of such a large company.

When Wal-Mart took over Asda in 1999 it withdrew from Business in the Community, which is headed by the Prince and which seeks to introduce good corporate practice in all sizes of companies.

Last year a report by McKinsey, the management consultant, which had been commissioned by Wal-Mart, concluded that the company was seen as a negative force in the communities in which it operated. Mr Scott devised a strategy, which he discussed with the Prince, to tackle the criticisms.

In October he announced a new healthcare programme for American employees and called for a rise in the national minimum wage. He promised to spend $500 million (£284 million) annually on environmental technologies at its stores so that the retailer could work towards 100 per cent renewable energy use.

At two trial stores, in Texas and Colorado, Wal-Mart is experimenting with solar panels, wind turbines and used cooking and motor oil for heating.

Asda is applying for planning permission to install wind turbines at six of its British warehouses as part of a plan to operate all its distribution centres on renewable energy.

However, Wal-Mart’s good intentions were called into question after an internal memo, leaked the same day that Mr Scott made his new agenda-setting speech last October, showed that his company was examining trimming its healthcare costs by employing younger, fitter workers.

THE PRINCE’S TRUST IN MODERATION

He was branded a danger to progress by some scientists after declaring that continuing research into nanotechnology, the groundbreaking study of matter a millionth of a millimetre wide, could lead to a “grey goo” overrunning the Earth

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• Shrinking violet Gordon turns into raging bull
• Eddie Izzard: 'I keep thinking if I do all these things she'll come back'
• Is sex for the disabled the last taboo?