By Graham Hiscott
JACK COHEN’S profit from his first day in business was £1. More than 80 years later, Tesco, the company he founded, has just reported annual profits of £1.7 billion.A 21-year-old Mr Cohen returned from serving with the Royal Air Force during the First World War in 1919 and invested £30 of his reward for military service to buy surplus food stockpiles. He opened a little stall in East London and gradually expanded to other markets all over London.

The name Tesco contains the initials of the owner of a firm supplying the stalls with tea, TE Stockwell, and part of Jack's surname Cohen.

The move onto the high street took place in 1929 when the Tesco name first appeared above a shop in Edgware, north London. There are now more than 960 branches of Tesco in Britain, with over 237,000 staff making it the country's biggest private sector employer.

Expansion has always been part of the Tesco success story and it now has stores in Ireland; the Czech Republic; Hungary; Poland; Turkey; Thailand; Japan; Korea; Taiwan and Malaysia.

Tesco is easily Britain's biggest supermarket with 27.3% of the market, according to latest till-roll figures from analysts TNS. Asda remains in second place with a 16.6% share.

Sainsbury's has slipped to third, with 15.7%, and only 1.1% ahead of Morrisons, fresh from its £3 billion takeover of Safeway.

Richard Hyman, retail analyst at Verdict, said Tesco deliver what they promise with unerring consistency and get very high marks on all the fundamental prerequisites of retail success.