Tesco reports £6.4bn loss - among the biggest in UK history

Supermarket giant Tesco has unveiled an annual loss of £6.38bn, one of the biggest ever reported by a UK company.

The supermarket will post its first yearly figures since new boss Dave Lewis was drafted in to turn around its fortunes following a series of profit warnings and ferocious price wars with rivals.

The retailer, which has 142 stores and 15,000 employees in Ireland, has also been rocked by an alleged accounting scandal that led to a £263m overstatement which is the subject of a Serious Fraud Office investigation.

However, the losses are another serious blow to the supermarket's reputation.

And analysts also foresee billions more being subtracted from the group's bottom line as it writes down the value of its properties by around £3bn as well as facing up to a pension fund deficit swelling to as much as £5bn.

Clive Black of Shore Capital said: "At a statutory level, it's going to be a horror show. But, for shareholders, it is about Dave Lewis and the future."

Ssenior analyst for Bernstein, Bruno Monteyne, expects the latest results to show Tesco's decline in sales narrowing in the fourth quarter of 2014.

He said: "Dave Lewis has regularly surprised us with how quickly he has moved since taking over: dealing with the accounting crisis, getting Tesco ready for a good Christmas period, starting the cost savings with aplomb."

Nonetheless, the numbers will be a far cry from results in recent years that have seen Tesco's annual trading profits near £4bn.

But sales went into an alarming slide under Mr Lewis's predecessor Philip Clarke, who departed last year.

Last autumn, it emerged that Tesco had overstated profits by £263m, sparking a series of inquiries involving the UK Serious Fraud Office, the accounting watchdog and the Groceries Code Adjudicator.

In January Tesco named 43 stores in the UK which it plans to close.

At least 2,000 staff across England, Wales and Northern Ireland were to be hit - but Tesco said no stores in Ireland would be shut.

Both in the UK and Ireland, Tesco has been caught up in a ferocious price war with its traditional rivals as well as new challengers Aldi and Lidl.

Last week it emerged that SuperValu has now toppled Tesco as Ireland's biggest grocery retailer, according to research group Kantar Worldpanel,

Tesco first entered the Irish market in 1997, when it bought the Quinnsworth chain.