Retail giant Tesco denies it is targeting closed pubs as a policy
A report in the British media at the end of June suggested that the UK’ s biggest retailer was using intermediaries to buy closed pubs with planning consent for retail development.
Tesco has rejected the allegation that it was pursuing a pub-property strategy – but what’ s the difference between an opportunistic and a purposeful approach? It’ s academic.
Secretly, the big supermarket operators – Tesco, Asda/Wal-Mart, Sainsbury’ s, Morrisons, Waitrose – believe that in the current economic climate local authorities will be less strict about allowing new supermarket developments on sites previously devoted to other purposes.
Their reasoning goes further that by using third parties to buy up closed pubs and shops, they can build up their land banks for future developments.
Most supermarket chains in the UK have several retail formats in their portfolios. Especially their local convenience store formats would be ideally suited for former pub sites.
Tesco saw its group sales rise 13.5 percent to GBP 59.4 billion in the year to the end of February 2009. Pre-tax profits of GBP 3.13 billion were up 10 percent on the previous year, and set a new profits record for UK retail.
