tesco store closure

[saundra]

Things must be bad with 43stores set to close
Been to greedy by far but I feel sorry for the staff
Our tesco is in need of a makeover really tatty but it won't get one

[Suff]

I don't know that it was greed so much as an accountancy department doing what the banks did. At best you could call it creative accountancy and at worst outright lying.

Those people were holding their jobs based on a false view of the profit the company was making. As the profit is doled out in slices, 20% to the government in taxes, another chunk to investors and the rest into the business, it is the stores and the workers who get the smallest part of the pile and therefore, consequently, the stores will be the first to feel the pinch.

I note nobody has mentioned how much tax the Government is going to have to repay them......

I'm not surprised that this kind of fiscal lying is now turning up in other corporations. There is no way that the banks were the only one's doing it and there is no way that the staff from the institutions who were doing it didn't circulate around the country. Funnily enough I think ASDA is probably immune from this because WalMart will be working on American accountancy audits rather than British.

I expect this will roll on for another decade or so with companies turning up false profits as these difficult financial times make it harder and harder to hide "creative accountancy". As we all know, when there is a lot of money coming in we look less at every penny to see where it went. Harder times force a harder regime.

[Kaz]

It is hard on the staff Saundra

I saw the list of proposed closures, the Homeplus at Staines near where I used to live and where my boys still live is going! I'm surprised as it's a really prosperous area, and I wouldn't think they'd struggle for custom

[KateLMead]

I think the man at the top resigned. Cannot remember his name, however I am sure he received a mammoth pot of gold to add to his ill gotten gains.

[TheOstrich]

They're closing four stores in the Birmingham and Black Country area, but I think they are just the little "Metro" or "Express" ones. None are near us, but then we haven't got a Tesco near us anyway!

What has shocked us though is that Homebase are closing its large store near our Asda, which we have used fairly regularly for this and that, and also summer plants. We find that quite surprising, given the amount of new house building work planned for this area. But the closure signs went up just over a week ago, with "everything must go" discounts (mind you, I think they hiked the prices before applying the discounts, which aren't exactly mega). Nevertheless, their car-park has been full to the brim this week, and we've been down there twice. We've lashed out on three potted and shaped boxus shrubs, two for the front and one for the back, Tomorite, fertilizer, toilet seat fixings (we seem to have a knack of breaking ours) and some large house numbers to stick on our bleddy wheelie bins when the unspeakable Birmingham City Council get around to supplying them (anytime in the next 5 months, apparently).

We gather they have sold the site to B&M. B&M are "one of UK's fastest growing variety retailers, we believe in selling Big Brands at Sensational Prices." Their words, not mine. It's well-known names like Mr Muscle, Crown paint, Nescafe, Walkers crisps, Olay, L'Oreal Elvive and Nurofen, as well as the sort of stuff that you might find to have fallen off the back of a Chinese container ship, ... a sort of modern day Woolworths, in a way. Seems to have started in Blackpool, so I suspect Rodo's hand in it somewhere!!

Crazy thing it, they opened a store on Castle Vale estate, less than two miles away, back in the autumn. We got a solar power operated festive holly ball from them for £12, which, well, yes, it does light up in the dusk for an hour or so and looks quite pretty, but only after a really sunny day, and we had to hang it in the back garden as the street lamps in the front turned it off!

Anyway, it will be interesting to see how it impacts on Asda. It might give them a bit of competition if B&M undercuts them on various well known brands. I gather outgoing staff at Homebase are being offered interviews with B&M.

[Kaz]

B&M are ok I guess, but more like a superannuated poundstore than a Woolworths, Ossie - Oh I do miss Woolies

Gloucester is getting yet another poundstore!! The old M&S site in Northgate which has been empty since they relocated to the old Woolworths site in the Eastgate Centre

[Workingman]

We are losing a Tesco Metro in Leeds. It is in one of those Arndale type shopping centres with everything under one roof, and that already had well established places like Wilko, Fultons, Greggs, Heron and Home Bargains. Just up the road is a massive ASDA Superstore and on the parade opposite you will find every takeaway imaginable.

Why it was ever opened is a mystery.