The ongoing unravelling of the great retail globalisation myth has taken its latest step with the news that Tesco has completed its withdrawal from Asia, through the proposed sale of its operations in Thailand and Malaysia.

The grocer still has a foothold in India, but this consists of support services and wholesaling to Star Bazaar. Previous exits from South Korea and China mean that Tesco has reverted to being a purely European retailer.

Tesco, alongside fellow globetrotters like Walmart, Carrefour, Casino, Ahold and Delhaize, embarked on a chequebook-wielding frenzy around the world in the 1990s – often under the guise of achieving the nebulous concept of global scale – but all of them have long since given up these world-straddling aspirations.

Instead, often prompted by decidedly underwhelming market conditions at home, they have collectively pulled out of dozens of countries to focus on fewer markets, making bigger bets on countries where genuine success is feasible.

From a Tesco point of view, this sees them become a much leaner beast. The core UK and Ireland division heads up a much smaller stable of businesses, which now only includes a presence in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

That Central and Eastern European arm has been best described as beleaguered over the last decade, with brutal competition, unhelpful legislative changes and Tesco’s exposure to hypermarkets doing it few favours.

There have been a great many store closures and disposals in the region, so perhaps the most likely outcome will be a piecemeal withdrawal as and when any interested parties come out of the woodwork in each country.

“The special dividend would normally have been rapturously received by the City were it not for the general carnage in global markets”

The Asian sale will deliver a huge amount of cash to Tesco, which it intends to largely return to shareholders through £5bn worth of special dividends, while £2.5bn will go into its pension fund.

The special dividend, one imagines, would normally have been rapturously received by the City were it not for the general carnage in global markets promoted by coronavirus and oil-related shenanigans.

The deal, therefore, leaves Tesco with only a modest war chest to reinvest in its core UK and Ireland business and its European operations, which, tellingly, only merited a line or three in this morning’s announcement.

In the recent past, there have been some notable investments in loyalty via Clubcard Plus and in value by way of the Aldi Price Match endeavour.

The jury is out on these moves and there is still a degree of disquiet out there over Tesco’s decision to dial down its in-store counter proposition – a great move from a cost perspective, but not ideal from a differentiation perspective.

“Considering where Tesco was five years ago, the transformation has been nothing short of remarkable”

Regardless of one’s thoughts on these latest initiatives, chief executive Dave Lewis will be handing over a business later this year that is in much better shape than when he found it back in September 2014. Considering where Tesco was five years ago, the transformation has been nothing short of remarkable.

In the UK, Tesco is back on the front foot in terms of innovation, loyalty and marketing, building on a core business spread across many channels that present a united front from a shopper perspective. It might be suggested, however, that some of the receipts from the Asian sale might have been better spent on UK stores than on placating shareholders.

There seems to be something of a race to the middle under way, with differentiation falling by the wayside, and there can be only so many stores that can take a sushi counter before peak sushi is reached.

With Morrisons sticking to its service counter guns, Sainsbury’s wheeling out some pretty decent refits and the discounters not slowing down, Tesco might find itself with splinters from the fence it finds itself sitting on.