Tesco suffers record annual loss of US $ 9.5 billion

The worst in its 96-year history, Tesco, British multinational grocery and general merchandise retailer plunged to an annual loss of 6.4 billion pounds ($9.5 billion), after shoppers deserted Britain’s biggest retailer and forced it to write down the value of its stores. The statutory loss, which also includes stock writedowns, is one of the biggest in British corporate history.

Tesco’s trading profit was 1.4 billion pounds, in line with company guidance but less than half of the 3.3 billion pounds made the year before and a third straight year of decline. Hurt by an accounting scandal and a price war sparked by the march of discount groups Aldi and Lidl, the supermarket wrote down the value of its business by 7 billion pounds to reflect restructuring charges and the lower sales its stores were making. The firm also revealed it had net debt of 8.5 billion pounds and a net pension deficit of 3.9 billion pounds.