Tesco planning to offload Dobbies Garden Centres

Tesco was reported to be preparing plans to sell its loss-making divisions on Monday, with chief executive Dave Lewis appointing an adviser to assist with a sale of garden centre chain Dobbies.

Sky News reported that Lewis had appointed Greenhill - an adviser to Tesco for some time - to work on the sale of the chain, which was purchased by Tesco in 2008 under the command of Sir Terry Leahy.

Dobbies has 35 garden centres across the UK, though they recorded a total loss of £48m in the 2015 financial year after a real estate value write-down.

Other businesses on the hook included coffee shop chain Harris & Hoole, which it recently took under full ownership after founding it as a joint venture, and bakery chain Euphorium, which features prominently in large Tesco supermarkets.

It was revealed last month that family restaurant chain Giraffe could also be disposed of, while executives had decided to close health foods business Nutricentre a fortnight ago.

Many of the non-core businesses were purchased under the stewardship of Lewis’s predecessor Philip Clarke, in a bid to diversify the retail monster away from groceries and utilise space in its larger properties.

Clarke was forced out of the business in 2014 after a series of profit warnings, which were followed by a restatement of profits shortly after Lewis’s arrival leading to an ongoing Serious Fraud Office investigation.

Lewis had openly stated his ambitions to turn the retailer around by focusing on groceries, and had already sold its South Korean operation for £4bn.

A planned sale of data analysis division Dunnhumby had to be called off after it failed to attract a suitable buyer.

Tesco was expected to report £450m in profit for the last financial year, compared to its record £6.4bn loss in 2014.