Tesco's big share-out

NATIONAL: Thousands of workers at supermarket giant Tesco weretoday being given a slice of a profit-sharing scheme pay-out worthGBP38 million.

More than 104,000 staff will reap the benefit of shares allocatedin 1999 which were being made available after being held in trust forthree years.

The shares were worth 188p when they were first allocated, but thevalue has since grown by more than 30 per cent.

Tesco staff will be able to keep the shares or cash them in. Theywill be worth around 3.6 per cent of a worker's salary.

Tesco chief executive Terry Leahy said:

"The continuing success of Tesco is down to our people and onceagain they will share the rewards for our outstanding performance."