Tesco successfully dodged some well-aimed bullets today when it calmed nervous investors with positive figures.
While, as widely expected, the appalling summer weather dampened the supermarket group’s like-for-like sales over the past six months, the 3.5 per cent sales growth that Tesco reported outstripped City forecasts of a 2 per cent rise.
A calm Sir Terry Leahy appeared sanguine about Britain’s cash-strapped consumers and predicted that the Bank of England would loosen the ties by the end of the year by cutting interest rates.
Tesco is still managing to find new revenue streams in the UK – it recently launched its new catalogue business – but growth is still largely dependent on opening new stores, and with a Competition Commission enquiry looking at supermarkets’ dominance