High street giant Marks & Spencer is in damage-control mode after poor sales figures for the festive period were leaked to Sky News on Wednesday evening. Sky’s scoop triggered a rush release of the full results – some 12 hours ahead of the expected Thursday-morning trading statement.

The numbers show a 1.8% dip in like-for-like UK sales (excluding new store openings) in the 13-week period up to Christmas, with general merchandise – which includes clothing – falling by an alarming 3.8%. Just one bright spot appears, in the form of a 0.3% sales rise for M&S’s food department, but even that fell short of forecasts. Markets duly responded, with almost £270m vanishing from the chain’s stock value. The share price fell by over 4.5% to 353p.

M&S chief executive Marc Bolland has stressed that no profits warning has been issued – but the poor Christmas performance nonetheless piles pressure on the current management team.

Bolland himself was recruited in May 2010 from supermarket chain Morrisons, and shook up the fashion team in November last year. Janie Schaffer was recruited from US luxury brand Victoria’s Secret to head up lingerie and beauty, with her predecessor Frances Russell being promoted to director of womenswear. Prior to this, Bolland moved John Dixon across from head of the successful food department to lead general merchandise, with Belinda Earl, former CEO of Debenhams, becoming style director. Meanwhile, fashion boss Kate Bostock, jumped ship to join rival ASOS.

At the time of the shake up, Bolland stated that he expected the full impact of the moves to come through in synch with the Autumn/Winter collections of July 2013, so perhaps it is hard to judge performance prior to this. However, it certainly seems that there will have to be spectacular improvement by then in order to ease the pressure on Bolland. With Neil Shah – industrial analyst at Edison Investment Research – describing M&S as “a lumbering supertanker”, it is debatable how realistic that proposition is.