Tesco sells Lazada stake for £90 million

Tesco continues to slim down overseas as the UK’s biggest supermarket group revealed it is to sell a stake in south-east Asian online retailer Lazada for £90 million.

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba is buying the 8.6% stake in Lazada, leaving Tesco with an 8.3% share in the business.

Tesco said it would use the cash for “general working capital purposes”.

The supermarket group, which is focusing on battling the rise of the German discounters Aldi and Lidl in the UK, first invested in Lazada in November 2013 when Philip Clarke was chief executive.

It emerged yesterday that Clarke’s predecessor Dave Lewis had hired M&A specialists Greenhill to round up potential buyers for its loss-making garden centre chain Dobbies.

In 2013, it bailed on its US operation Fresh & Easy at a cost of £1.2 billion after never making a profit stateside.

Lewis is widely expected to reveal his turnaround efforts have been paying off when the grocer reports its annual results on Wednesday, with a surprise 1.3% jump in sales over Christmas carrying over to its fourth quarter.