Tesco shareholders go to war over profit overstatement scandal
Tesco shareholders rankled by Tesco’s recent profit overstatements have recruited a top City barrister to fight their cause against the retail group, in a bid to claim redress.
Reports from Sky News suggest Philip Marshall QC will represent Tesco Shareholder Claims, the umbrella group for burned investors in the supermarket chain who were left nursing significant losses when the firms share price slumped amidst last autumn’s accounting scandal.
The group includes a number of institutional investors, adding to the legal woes headed Tesco’s way.
For its part Tesco has vowed to defend itself in court, despite having been found to have overstated profits by as much as £320m and a live investigation being carried out by the Serious Fraud Office.
The Groceries Code Adjudicator and the Financial Reporting Council are also conducting their own inquiries into what went wrong.
In an attempt to put such woes behind it Tesco is embarking on an ambitious turnaround strategy to place the business on an even footing; including a programme of store closures, cost cutting and sell offs.