LONDON - Tesco, the world's third-biggest retailer, has signed a joint venture to build three more shopping malls in China as part of its plans to rapidly expand in the world's most populous country, Reuters reported Monday.
The total value of the project to build the shopping malls in Shenyang, Xiamen and Fuzhou is around 170 million pounds ($274 million), with Tesco and the consortium each investing about 30 million pounds of equity, it said.Debt will be provided by banks including the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and Standard Chartered Bank, it added.
The British supermarket group said on Monday that 50 percent of the venture would be owned by a consortium of Asian investors including Singapore's Metro Holdings.
Tesco said in November it aimed to quadruple revenue in China to about 4 billion pounds over five years by more than doubling its number of hypermarkets to over 200.
The group currently runs four Lifespace shopping malls in China, where one of its hypermarkets is the anchor tenant.
It plans to have built around 50 Lifespace malls by 2014-15, in collaboration with joint venture partners.
