Tesco ends sale of 5p single-use carrier bags

Three former Tesco bosses charged over accounting scandal

12 September

Three former executives at the supermarket group Tesco have been charged in relation to the £320m accounting scandal that shattered the store's reputation back in 2014.

"Carl Rogberg, the former finance director of Tesco UK, Christopher Bush, the former managing director of Tesco UK, and John Scouler, the former commercial director for food, have all been charged with one count of fraud by abuse of position and one count of false accounting," reports The Guardian.

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The paper adds that the charges carry maximum potential prison sentences of ten and seven years respectively. All three will appear before Westminster Magistrates' Court on 22 September.

In late September 2014, Tesco admitted it had overstated its profits by around £250m after revelations from a whistleblower that it routinely included supplier payments in its reports before they were due.

The overstatement was subsequently clarified as being £263m for the first half of 2014. It was later upped by another £60m after discrepancies from previous reporting periods were added.

Tesco's shares fell by 11.5 per cent on the day of the original announcement to an 11-year low of 204p. After recovering last year, they've since fallen much lower. This morning they were trading at 162p, but this has more to do with the growth of the discount chains Aldi and Lidl than the accounting scandal.

The legal representative for 50-year-old Christopher Bush told the Guardian: "He is not guilty and from the outset has fully co-operated with both Tesco and the SFO [Serious Fraud Office] in their investigations. He will vigorously contest these allegations and is confident he will be cleared of any wrongdoing."

Neil O'May, a partner at the law firm Norton Rose Fulbright, which is representing 49-year-old Carl Rogberg, says he "has always denied any wrongdoing" and "will be vigorously contesting the charges to prove his innocence".

John Scouler, who is 48, joined the internet provider TalkTalk as commercial director in February last year but is understood to be on sabbatical. TalkTalk has acknowledged the SFO announcement but says it cannot comment further on an ongoing legal matter.

All three of the directors charged were among eight directors suspended in the wake of the scandal. Tesco has also had to fight legal actions from investors overseas. The BBC says it paid out $12m (£9m) last November to settle claims in the US that the profits overstatement had inflated its share price.

The SFO says its investigation is still in progress and further charges may yet be brought. According to the Guardian, former chief executive Philip Clarke is not expected to face criminal proceedings. The company may avoid prosecution if it accepts a fine that some speculate could be as high as £500m.

Last week, the Financial Reporting Council, the accountancy watchdog, dropped a probe into Laurie McIlwee, the former Tesco chief financial officer, but it is still investigating the firm's auditor PwC.

Tesco enters supermarket 'time wars'

25 August

"Tesco has fired the latest salvo in what is being dubbed the 'time wars' between food retailers," says the Daily Telegraph.

The UK's largest supermarket is launching a same-day collection service that will enable shoppers to place an order before 1pm and collect it from their local store after 4pm.

The service will be available at 300 of its larger stores, accounting for 90 per cent of those that already offer the click-and-collect option to customers, says Sky News. It will cost £2 to book a two-hour collection slot between Monday and Thursday and £3 for Friday and Saturday.

The Telegraph says the launch is the latest move in the sector to appeal to "increasingly time-poor shoppers as the trend for convenience grips the nation".

It also offers a competitive edge over the likes of Aldi and Lidl, which have been gaining market share rapidly, without resorting to more profit-dampening price cuts.

As well as the two discounters, there is also the nascent threat of Amazon, which has introduced a same-day grocery delivery service for its UK Prime subscribers, offering a range of fresh and frozen products from Morrisons.

Sainsbury's also launched a same-day collection service in June, but this is initially only available in three stores, rising to 30 by Christmas.

Tesco said it will particularly target customers travelling on holiday who want to collect essential groceries on their way home.

It's all part of the brand's turnaround, which has seen it re-focus on its core customer offering and sell a range of non-core investments. Figures yesterday suggested the group was on track to sales growth by the end of the year.

Tesco 'may return to sales growth this year'

24 August

Tesco once again saw the best quarterly sales performance of the "big four" supermarkets and is on course to return to overall sales growth this year.

According to industry researcher Kantar Worldpanel, overall sales at the UK's largest grocer fell 0.4 per cent for the 12 weeks to 14 August, reports the BBC.

This shows a continuing improvement from the 0.7 per cent fall in the last set of rolling figures in July, which had marked the best performance for Tesco in terms of market share for two years.

The group has been undertaking a back-to-basics turnaround in the past 18 months since recording the biggest loss in British corporate history, including selling off non-core assets.

Fraser McKevitt, the head of retail and consumer insight at Kantar Worldpanel, said: "Current trends suggest the retailer may return to growth this year, which would mark the end of a decline stretching back to March 2015."

The latest set of figures showed a bounce-back for the supermarket sector amid the late July heatwave and the feel-good boost of UK success at the Olympics.

Overall sales rose by 0.3 per cent, says Kantar, while the value of sales for the three-month period was up 0.9 per cent on a year ago, separate research from Nielson revealed.

However, the big four are still ceding market share to the discounters Aldi and Lidl, with Sainsbury's down 0.6 per cent, Morrisons 1.8 per cent and Asda a massive 5.5 per cent.

In contrast, Lidl's sales, the best across the sector, rose 12.2 per cent and Aldi wasn't far behind with growth of 10.4 per cent.

There is some solace for the established brands in that these rates are well below where they were a year ago – and analysts at Bernstein remain of the view that like-for-like sales at established stores are now in negative territory.

Fewer goods were also bought on discount, with Kantar reporting that "better value… own-brand goods growing at both ends of the price spectrum", says the Daily Telegraph.

Tesco sales at their most resilient for more than a year

27 June

There was more evidence that a turnaround at Tesco is bearing fruit today, as industry figures showed the supermarket's sales at their most resilient for more than a year.

Britain's largest grocer saw sales fall 0.7 per cent over the 12 weeks to 17 July, according to data from Kantar Worldpanel. This made it the best performer of the so-called "big four" and meant market share dipped just 0.2 per cent to 28.3 per cent - the slowest decline recorded in Kantar's rolling monthly report since March 2014, the Daily Telegraph reports.

Chief executive Dave Lewis has been implementing a 'back-to-basics' turnaround over the past year, including reducing the number of product lines, closing loss-making stores and selling non-core assets.

Elsewhere in the industry-wide data, Sainsbury's retained second spot with a slide of 1.1 per cent over the 12 weeks, which similarly translated to a 0.2 per cent dip in market share. Asda came in third but continued to shed shoppers, with sales slumping 5.6 per cent.

Morrisons, the smallest of the big four, saw sales fall 1.8 per cent as a direct result of the closure of 28 stores, putting its market share at 10.7 per cent.

Significantly, this is now the same as the combined share of the German discounters Aldi and Lidl, which saw sales soar 12.5 per cent and 11 per cent respectively. The Daily Mirror called it a "breakthrough" for the discount duo.

Analysts at Bernstein, however, highlighted signs that the growth rates enjoyed by the two insurgents is easing and that in Aldi's case, like-for-like sales during a period of rapid expansion could even be flat.

Overall supermarket sales eked out growth of 0.1 per cent over the three months, while annual price deflation remained stable at 1.4 per cent.

This suggests that the EU referendum has so far had little effect on the sector. Sales did decline by 1.1 per cent in the final four weeks of the data set – and rival researcher Nielson recorded a sales fall of 2.4 per cent over the same period – but that was mostly attributed to poor June weather.

Tesco sales recover - but asset sell-off continues

23 June

Tesco has continued to see sales grow as its back-to-basics recovery rolls on - and has also continued to slim down by off-loading its Harris + Hoole coffee shop business.

The supermarket group announced like-for-like sales in stores open more than one year had risen 0.3 per cent for the three months to 28 May, down from 0.9 per cent in the preceding period, The Guardian notes, but crucially marking a second consecutive quarterly rise for the first time in five years.

Alongside price cuts and a rationalisation of its product lines, Tesco pointed to the success of its new fresh food ranges.

These initially caused controversy for being branded with the names of fictional British farms despite the produce "often being sourced from abroad", the BBC reports. However, two-thirds of customers have now tried them and customer ratings of the "quality of its fresh food offer as a whole have improved to their highest level in more than two years", said the grocer.

The sale of Harris + Hoole to Cafe Nero, which Sky News reports follows that of restaurant chain Giraffe and garden centre business Dobbies in recent weeks, is also the latest development in chief executive Dave Lewis's plan to simplify Tesco's investment portfolio.

The company initially took a stake in the then-independent chain in 2012 and exercised its right to buy out the majority interest of its founders and take full control this February.

Lewis told the Guardian the sale was the end of the "second chapter" of his turnaround and Tesco is now "concentrating on improving the performance of the assets it had retained"."We sit here with no plans on our stocks for asset sales," he added.

As for the sales, Lewis said: "We have delivered a second quarter of positive like-for-like sales growth across all parts of the group in what remains a challenging market with sustained deflation. We are encouraged by the progress we are making."

Tesco shares had risen 2.4 per cent to 170.4p by around 11.30am in London trading today.