Britain’s biggest retailer, supermarket group Tesco PLC, yesterday said it was selling its Turkish business as its international arm focuses on its operations in Central Europe and Southeast Asia.
Tesco, which is slowly turning around its performance after a record annual loss in 2014-2015, said in a statement it was offloading also its mainly British restaurant chain, Giraffe, after only three years.
The supermarket giant is selling its 95.5 percent controlling stake in Turkish business Kipa to rival group Migros.
The sale, subject to local regulatory approvals, will result in estimated cash proceeds of about ￡30 million (US$43 million), contributing to a reduction of about ￡110 million in total debt, Tesco said.
“The sale of Kipa reflects the particular strategic challenge we have faced in Turkey as a small regional player in a highly competitive market,” Tesco chief executive Dave Lewis said in the statement. “It removes the need for the sustained investment required to enable the business to compete independently, allowing us to focus on improving profitability in Central Europe and continuing to grow our businesses in Southeast Asia.”
Tesco entered the Turkish market in 2003, growing the business to 170 stores that employ about 9,600 staff, according to its Web site.
Tesco is selling Giraffe to Boparan Restaurants Holdings Ltd for an undisclosed amount.
Regarding the decision to sell Giraffe, Lewis added: “As we stabilize the business in the UK, we continue to focus on where we can best serve the needs of our customers, while ensuring our business remains sustainable for the long-term.”
Tesco’s overall business rebounded into profit in the year to February on strong sales, after a vast property writedown and challenging home trade sparked a record ￡5.7 billion loss in its previous financial year.
In recent years, Tesco’s performance has been hurt by increased competition in Britain, particularly from German-owned discount retailers Aldi Einkauf GmbH and Lidl GmbH, as well as Morrisons Supermarkets PLC, Sainsbury’s PLC and Wal-Mart Stores Inc-owned Asda Stores Ltd.
Tesco has also exited its businesses in South Korea and the US.
Meta Platforms Inc offered US$100 million bonuses to OpenAI employees in an unsuccessful bid to poach the ChatGPT maker’s talent and strengthen its own generative artificial intelligence (AI) teams, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said. Facebook’s parent company — a competitor of OpenAI — also offered “giant” annual salaries exceeding US$100 million to OpenAI staffers, Altman said in an interview on the Uncapped with Jack Altman podcast released on Tuesday. “It is crazy,” Sam Altman told his brother Jack in the interview. “I’m really happy that at least so far none of our best people have decided to take them
BYPASSING CHINA TARIFFS: In the first five months of this year, Foxconn sent US$4.4bn of iPhones to the US from India, compared with US$3.7bn in the whole of last year Nearly all the iPhones exported by Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團) from India went to the US between March and last month, customs data showed, far above last year’s average of 50 percent and a clear sign of Apple Inc’s efforts to bypass high US tariffs imposed on China. The numbers, being reported by Reuters for the first time, show that Apple has realigned its India exports to almost exclusively serve the US market, when previously the devices were more widely distributed to nations including the Netherlands and the Czech Republic. During March to last month, Foxconn, known as Hon Hai Precision Industry
PLANS: MSI is also planning to upgrade its service center in the Netherlands Micro-Star International Co (MSI, 微星) yesterday said it plans to set up a server assembly line at its Poland service center this year at the earliest. The computer and peripherals manufacturer expects that the new server assembly line would shorten transportation times in shipments to European countries, a company spokesperson told the Taipei Times by telephone. MSI manufactures motherboards, graphics cards, notebook computers, servers, optical storage devices and communication devices. The company operates plants in Taiwan and China, and runs a global network of service centers. The company is also considering upgrading its service center in the Netherlands into a
Taiwan’s property market is entering a freeze, with mortgage activity across the nation’s six largest cities plummeting in the first quarter, H&B Realty Co (住商不動產) said yesterday, citing mounting pressure on housing demand amid tighter lending rules and regulatory curbs. Mortgage applications in Taipei, New Taipei City, Taoyuan, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung totaled 28,078 from January to March, a sharp 36.3 percent decline from 44,082 in the same period last year, the nation’s largest real-estate brokerage by franchise said, citing data from the Joint Credit Information Center (JCIC, 聯徵中心). “The simultaneous decline across all six cities reflects just how drastically the market
RSS