The chief executive of Woolworths, Brad Banducci, is to retire having strengthened the supermarket giant’s profitability. But despite his considerable business achievements, many families will remember him as one of the corporate leaders responsible for taking more and more out of their weekly budgets.

Banducci will not leave for six months. He will therefore appear before the ACTU’s inquiry into price gouging and unfair pricing practices. He is most likely to be one of the fall guys to carry the can for supermarkets and cop a shellacking from politicians.

Woolworths Group CEO Brad Banducci.Credit: Natalie Boog

But his staying on may afford his successor at Woolworths, Amanda Bardwell, an opportunity to distance herself from the past as the company attempts to balance customer outrage against shareholder expectations.

After years of high-profile success, Banducci has not been travelling well of late. Amid growing rage over price gouging, he was caught in the political crossfire over Woolworths’ decision not to sell Australia Day merchandise.

Then on Monday he briefly walked out from an ABC Four Corners interview after being asked about former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman Rod Sims’ observation that the Australian grocery sector was one of the most concentrated in the world.

Fit of pique? Who knows? But surely Banducci would have been expecting a question along these lines. After all, monopoly has long been a major way of making money in Australia. Just ask the old media owners, Qantas, GrainCorp, big miners and for that matter, the four big supermarkets. The latter group holds 85 per cent of the market and Woolworths and Coles have 70 per cent of the total share. The two biggest supermarket chains are being pilloried as Australians struggle to meet the escalating cost of living.

Two days after his train wreck interview aired, Banducci pulled the plug. Woolworths chairman Scott Perkins said he was not pushed, and the company had been looking for a replacement since last winter.

Banducci sought to put a good spin on his impending retirement after eight years as Woolworths CEO, saying it was his own decision and came after “important conversations” with his family in recent years and awareness of his own “mortality”.