James Moore: Tesco shareholders who want their cashback

The fact it’s facing a shareholder lawsuit can’t come as any great surprise to Tesco.

Its shareholders were clearly misled about its profits last year, and the impact has been bruising.

Lawyers have a tendency to stampede when faced with situations like that, rather like the bargain hunters battling each other for deals during last year’s disastrous Black Friday sales event. They’re scarcely any more civilised.

The class action being mooted would pit one group of shareholders (those who lost out as a result of the profit warning) against current shareholders.

Although that means it’s something of a zero-sum gain, the latter lot can probably wear the costs of it.

Those who bought in during the aftermath of that profit alert might feel they got something like three for the price of two thanks to the Dave Lewis-inspired share price recovery that followed.

As for those who sue, given how battered they’ve been by doing their investment shopping at Tesco they will presumably feel that… now, how did that slogan go?

“Every little helps”.