21 March 2007
Tesco 'ruining towns and stifling choice'
By Martin Hickman, Consumer Affairs Correspondent The Independent
"Tesco is descending like a black cloud over Britain's towns and cities, stifling choice and fostering a sense of alienation: those are just some of the claims made in a new book about Britain's biggest supermarket. Tescopoly, by Andrew Simms, an economist, charts the rise of Tesco's " pile it high, sell it cheap" approach and damns its ethos, methods and influence. Tesco is depicted as a megalomaniac company that mistreats suppliers and rivals, manipulates planners and helps create "clone towns". With annual profits of £43bn, Tesco takes almost one-third of food spending in the UK but its expansion is being opposed by a varied army of campaigners. A website, Tescopoly, founded by the environmental pressure group Friends of the Earth, the charity War on Want and other organisations, aims to co-ordinate local campaigns. In an independent book of the same name, Mr Simms, the policy director of the New Economics Foundation and one of the site's founders, argues Tesco has a pernicious influence on society." Tesco in numbers
12 Countries with stores (Britain, Ireland, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Turkey, China, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand and South Korea)
979 Global stores in 2002
2,672 Global stores in 2006
20m British customers weekly
£43bn Sales in 2005/06
£2.2bn Profit in 2005/06
30% Share of UK grocery market
£3.9m pay for Sir Terry Leahy Read more Here
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