Tesco
British multinational retailer
Tesco plc () is a British multinational groceries and general merchandise retailer headquartered in the United Kingdom at its head offices in Welwyn Garden City, England. The company was founded by Sir Jack Cohen in Hackney, London, in 1919. In 2023, it was the 15th largest retailer in the world by revenue. It is the market leader of groceries in the UK (where it has a market share of around 28.4%). Tesco also has stores in the Czech Republic, Ireland, Slovakia, the Isle of Man and Hungary.
Since the 1960s, Tesco has diversified into areas such as the retailing of books, clothing, electronics, furniture, toys, petrol, software, financial services, telecommunications and internet services. In the 1990s, Tesco re-positioned itself from being a downmarket high-volume low-cost retailer, attempting to attract a range of social groups with its low-cost "Tesco Value" range (launched 1993) and premium "Tesco Finest" range.
Tesco is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.
History
Origins
Jack Cohen, the son of Jewish migrants from Poland, founded Tesco in 1919 when he began to sell war-surplus groceries from a stall at Well Street Market, Hackney, in the East End of London. The Tesco brand first appeared in 1924.
The public source identifies “Tesco” as british multinational retailer. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Tesco, British and multinational.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q487494. VIAF identifies the subject as 136016327. The Library of Congress control number is n85105477. 4 of 10 selected statements include explicit references; 7 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1919, 2023, 1993 and 1924.
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This entry incorporates text from “Tesco” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.