For years, retail giants have sought to offer financial services to their customers in the hope of winning more of their main grocery businesses. But more recently retailers including Walmart and Tesco have retrenched from offering those services as they sought to boost profitability and faced various challenges, including the logistics of offering highly regulated products and the difficulty of competing with more established rivals.
“This is a good outcome for Sainsbury’s to dispose of its bank, after a long sale period where it struggled to find a buyer,” William Woods, an analyst at Bernstein, said in a note to clients.