Philip Clarke

Comments 0CARDIFF, Wales — Tesco told shareholders it will shut down the Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market chain if it continues to disappoint, according to published reports. Speaking at the company's annual meeting here Friday, Philip Clarke, Tesco's chief executive officer, said, "If we see there is no chance of success, we'll do as we've just done in Japan," referring to Tesco's decision last year to leave that market. "It is not about ego — we are businessmen." The company rejected calls from Change to Win for an independent review of Fresh & Easy. Change to Win, an investment

You'd think on the heels of Tesco's decision to cut performance bonuses for its store managers there really wasn't anything else the chain's CEO could do but turn down his own. But the relative rarity of top executives doing the right thing has made Philip Clarke's decision to pass on $587,000 a big news item. "I decided at the beginning of the year that I would decline my annual bonus for 2012," Clarke said in a statement. "I wasn't satisfied with the performance in the U.K. and I won't take the bonus. I'm confident that we're tackling the right issues."

LONDON — The break-even forecast for the U.S. division of Tesco has been pushed back to early next year, the U.K. retail giant announced in its fiscal-year results. The company noted its projected break-even for its U.S. unit Fresh & Easy now will be later than its earlier guidance because "[we] intend to focus on delivering store level profitability first, before pushing on faster with the expansion we need to create sufficient scale to cover our overheads." Fresh & Easy — which operates stores across Arizona, California and Nevada — however, showed "promising results" in the fiscal year ended

Grocery giant Tesco said it's pulling out of Japan, which means shuttering 129 small, leasehold-owned stores in Tokyo, which employ 4,000 people. The country is the smallest of Tesco’s international retail businesses and the weakest for sales growth in the 2010-2011 fiscal year.

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