It is 17 years since the management of Tesco suffered a severe case of hubris and thought they could conquer the US. A supposedly small experiment with a format called Fresh & Easy ended in an embarrassing retreat and a near-£2bn write-off. And it is 10 years since the great accounting scandal and the bullying of suppliers, a crisis era mixed up with wacky diversions into music streaming (Blinkbox), Android tablets (Hudl) and coffee shops (Harris + Hoole).
The contrast with today could not be starker. Thursday’s strong half-year numbers were accompanied by a forecast that the full-year tally for “retail adjusted operating profit”, Tesco’s slightly odd preferred metric, will be £2.9bn, about £100m better than the last time it spoke. Given the group’s recent habit of underpromising, nobody will be surprised if the round number of £3bn is reached.
