Supermarket Tesco has announced a sale and leaseback agreement for its South Korea Homeplus stores in a deal worth £355m.
The deal, concluded with real estate firm Samsung SRA, features four of its Homeplus discount chain stores.
Tesco, who entered South Korea in 1999 in a joint venture with Samsung, has grown Homeplus to become its largest international business with revenue of over £5bn in 2012/13.
Homeplus now has 550 stores in South Korea.
Tesco said: “This announcement further demonstrates the underlying value of our operations in Korea and the attractiveness of our property and business to investors.”
The news comes as its $110m expansion into India was given the green light by India‘s Foreign Investment Promotion Board yesterday. Tesco will open three or four stores a year in a slow expansion designed to be in line with sourcing regulations.
