Tesco

new york -- Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is hiring middle-management-level executives to help evaluate the types of stores that it operates before the arrival of British grocery Tesco to the United States. But the world's largest retailer said it would be "wrong to speculate" on what those job openings might mean for future merger-and-acquisition activity. Earlier Monday, the Financial Times had reported that the retailer was considering acquisitions in the U.S.

Tesco will call its new chain of grocery stores in the U.S. the Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market, the British retailer said. The company was eyeing sites for 300 small grocery stores in Southern California, Las Vegas and Phoenix and was prepared to spend as much as $2 billion over five years on its launch, Tesco USA Chief Executive Tim Mason said. The first stores will open this year. Each market will be 10,000 square feet, about the size of a Trader Joe's grocery store.

Automation ? long a force in agriculture and manufacturing ? is accelerating in the retail sector, a trend that could hamper efforts to bring down the nation's stubbornly high jobless rate. In an industry that employs nearly 1 in 10 Americans and has long been a reliable job generator, companies increasingly are looking to peddle more products with fewer employees. Shipping and warehousing workers are being replaced by robots that can process packages more efficiently than humans.

Another British invasion is coming -- and this time it's targeting your neighborhood convenience store. Supermarket giant Tesco, which has dominated Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and other competitors to maintain its standing as Britain's largest retailer, announced Thursday that it would enter the U.S. market next year by opening convenience stores on the West Coast. Tesco said it would spend as much as $435 million a year to build stores in the U.S. based on its Tesco Express format.

Tesco, the giant British retailer that is about to open a chain of small grocery stores in Southern California, refused to say Thursday whether it would meet with a coalition of community groups concerned about the company's commitment to decent wages, affordable health benefits and greenhouse gas reduction.

Not a single Fresh & Easy market has opened in Southern California, but British owner Tesco is already under pressure from community groups to live up to promises to pay decent wages, provide affordable health benefits and reduce greenhouse gases. Tesco, the world's third-largest retailer, is spending $2 billion to build hundreds of small grocery stores in Southern California and the Southwest. In launching its U.S. business, the company has boasted of green and worker-friendly practices.

A new chain of mid-size grocery stores -- each about the size of a Trader Joe's -- is quietly being readied for a full-scale assault this fall on Southern California. With little fanfare so far, Tesco, Britain's largest retailer, is spending as much as $2 billion to launch Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market, starting in the Southland, Las Vegas and Phoenix. Tesco, with more than $80 billion in annual sales, already operates in 13 countries and has about 370,000 employees.

Britain's biggest grocer, Tesco, said Monday that it will pay $22 million for a stake in Safeway Inc.'s online outlet, GroceryWorks.com, to get a toehold in the world's largest home-shopping market. In return, Safeway's GroceryWorks would benefit from the know-how that has made Tesco.com the world's biggest and only profitable online grocer, the two firms said in a statement.

British grocery giant Tesco plans to take over a shuttered Albertsons market in Glassell Park, an indication that it intends to build bigger stores than first expected. The 32,500-square-foot location will be among the first of a group that the world's third-largest retailer will open on the West Coast next year. "It is a strategy of developing local scale. They want to build enough market share to matter," said Darrell Rigby, who heads the global retail practice of consultant Bain & Co.

When British grocery chain Tesco announced that it would expand into Southern California with its new line of Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Markets, shoppers and local officials took heart. They were particularly excited about the company's stated commitment to doing business in underserved neighborhoods, including South Los Angeles -- where affordable, fresh groceries have been hard to come by since the 1992 riots.