Introduction
In April 2009, Tesco, the UK’s largest retailer and private sector employer of labour, announced annual sales for 2008/09 of almost £60 billion (x66bn or $90.2bn) together with profits of £3 billion (x3.3bn or $4.5bn). After a dramatic decade-long transformation from purely domestic operator to multinational giant, Tesco now had a remarkable 64 per Source: Getty Images. cent of its operating space outside the UK, was developing increasingly strong businesses across 11 Asian and European markets, had a rapidly expanding ‘start-up’ subsidiary operating in the western USA, and had announced its entry into the Indian market. Moreover, as signalled in both the title of its Annual Report (Value Travels) and the prominence given in that report to its international profile, the firm was publicly expressing its confidence that it had mastered the art of international expansion, so long a weakness of UK retailing. Tesco’s emergence as the world’s third largest retailer, operating 2025 stores and employing 183,600 staff outside the UK by 2008/09, represents one of the most successful examples of strategic diversification by any UK company and offers insight into the role of the ‘corporate strategist’, the CEO.

International expansion – from the UK to Central Europe, Asia and North America In the early 1990s Tesco was the UK’s second largest food retailer, lagging behind the market leader Sainsbury’s in terms of sales density, turnover growth and profitability. Over the next decade it managed a remarkable transformation – repositioning itself from its discount roots into a mass market customer-focused retailer serving all segments of the UK market. By judicious acquisition of some smaller rivals, and by innovative and flexible store development programmes which by the mid-2000s had transformed it into a genuine multi-format operator with 72 per cent of its UK stores in