Tesco eyes £1bn from bank sale The City now regards a large-scale cash-raising exercise by Tesco as inevitable with analysts at HSBC estimating that the cost of turning round the supermarket giant could eventually rise to as much as £3bn. There are three main assets that could be disposed of to raise such a large sum and as a result are now actively being looked at by the board and Tesco's in-house mergers and acquisitions team, led by the former Lazard banker Jonathan Lewis. The largest is a carve-out and separate stockmarket listing of Tesco's huge Asian assets. Analysts estimate the businesses would be worth between £8bn and £10bn. Tesco's largest operations in the region are in Thailand, where it has 1,700 stores under the Tesco Lotus brand and a collection of smaller stores, and South Korea, where it has more than 400 Homeplus stores. It also has a strong presence in Malaysia. The option of spinning off the Asian business is gaining traction because it would enable a considerable amount of cash to be raised while still keeping Tesco's valuable international empire largely intact because it could opt to retain a stake. A sale or float of part of the bank is also seen as an attractive option. In 2008, Tesco paid nearly £1bn to buy out joint venture partner Royal Bank of Scotland. The bank has around 6m customers and employs more than 4,000 staff. However, a listing in the coming months could prove challenging after a string of UK listings were pulled in the face of worsening investor sentiment, while Tesco Bank's own performance has been disappointing. Financial figures for Tesco's personal finance arm, released alongside the supermarket group's half-year results, revealed that profits at the bank had fallen by nearly a quarter to £80m this year from £104.7m the previous year on the back of rising bad debts. The third option that is being studied closely is a sale of Dunnhumby, the division behind Tesco's Clubcard scheme. It is understood that Tesco has been encouraged to look at disposing of Dunnhumby following a flurry of private equity interest. The accounting irregularities uncovered at Tesco led to the company writing off £263m of profits. Sources have said the blackhole was the result of "inappropriate behaviour" by a "small group" of employees. Tesco declined to comment.