The chairman of Britain's biggest grocery chain, Tesco, resigned after the company reported a bigger than expected hole in its finances and said accounting transgressions went back further than initially thought.

Tesco, Britain's biggest private employer and once the juggernaut of its retail sector, has lost half its market value this year after the accounting errors compounded a succession of profit warnings, said a report in the Gulf Daily News (GDN), our sister publication.

New chief executive Dave Lewis, just seven weeks into the job, said he could no longer provide a full-year profit forecast because he did not know the full scale of Tesco's problems or how much it would cost to rebuild the firm.

With net debt rising, the pension deficit expanding and business in its home market deteriorating rapidly, the 95-year-old group said it was looking at all options to raise cash.

Lewis, 49, told investors there were no easy answers and they should not expect the presentation of a single new over-arching strategy but rather a series of incremental improvements that would be felt over time.

“Our business is operating in challenging times,” said Lewis. “Trading conditions are tough and our underlying profitability is under pressure.”

Chairman Richard Broadbent, accused by many investors of poor corporate governance during his three-year tenure, said he planned to step down once the new management and business plan were in place.

Tesco said the overall impact from the incorrect booking of income was £263 million ($421 million), up from an original estimate of £250 million. - TradeArabia News Service