The new owners of Asda have been urged to overhaul the supermarket’s strategy after its performance over the Christmas period lagged behind its rivals.
The Issa brothers and TDR Capital, their private equity partner, completed their £6.8 billion takeover of Asda this week after financing their buyout with the biggest sterling junk bond on record, a sale and leaseback of the grocer’s warehouses and the sale of Asda’s forecourts to EG Group, their petrol station and forecourt store empire.
Asda recorded a 5.1 per cent rise in like-for-like sales during the fourth quarter and a 6.9 per cent increase in the shorter eight-week run-up to Christmas Eve. Despite increasing online delivery capacity by 90 per cent to 850,000 orders a week and recording a 76 per cent increase in online sales, the growth still fell short of what its rivals had recorded.
Read more/Source: The Times
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