MANY top British companies deserve to be admired. We prefer to knock them or flog them. One admirable big company, the plasterboard multinational BPB, now finds itself in a battle to fight off a cheap money takeover. It is receiving scant public support.

For most of the past decade, however, business people asked to name their favourite company have most often chosen Tesco or BP. Tesco lost top spot to Cadbury Schweppes in December’s Management Today ratings, although Sir Terry Leahy, the chief executive, remained the most admired leader ahead of BP’s Lord Browne of Madingley.

Success does not tend to make you popular. If you are growing ever bigger and trouncing the opposition, you are likely to become the target of ever closer scrutiny, of ever more querulous criticism and ever more shrill attack. No one loves an oil company when fuel prices are painfully high and profits bulging. But BP can at least thank the accident of history that has left it a far from dominant player in its home market.

Tesco’s admirable qualities of efficiency, innovation and vision have allowed it to overtake Sainsbury’s, the former top dog in supermarkets. It has now left its competitors behind, including even Wal-Mart, America’s dominant player.

Tesco’s share of the grocery market, acquired largely by the old-fashioned method of opening stores and selling more goods, has grown above 30 per cent on some counts. The company’s reward is to come under attack from all sides: from Gerry Sutcliffe, the Competition and Consumer Affairs Minister; from the Association of Convenience Stores and a group of MPs batting for small shops; from anti-free market groups; from small food producers; and, most importantly, from rival supermarkets Sainsbury and Wal-Mart.

Lee Scott, head of Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest private sector employer, has called on the Government to force an inquiry into Tesco’s dominance. The American company has a record of success in lobbying in Whitehall. When it came into the market by buying Asda, it impressed ministers so much by its vaunted low prices that it helped to launch the self-harming rip-off Britain campaign.

Some ministers even thought it should be given special treatment, allowed to open out-of-town stores when the others were being hit with planning restrictions, or even being allocated rivals’ development sites.

Consumers are the chief absentees from this alliance of enemies circling Sir Terry. But consumers have propelled it to its top spot. And local consumers mostly welcome the many neighbourhood stores the group is now opening. Some are new, for instance at petrol stations. Others were rundown chains of smaller shops that traded at high prices, were consequently patronised as little as possible and were going nowhere but down.

The re-invasion of high streets by Tesco and Sainsbury’s, in response to limits on out-of-town development, is today’s bone of contention.

Independents have lobbied the Office of Fair Trading to set up yet another inquiry. The Competition Appeal Tribunal and Mr Sutcliffe have joined in. The return of Tesco has changed the business since 2000, when the Competition Commission said that supermarkets and neighbourhood stores served different markets. Tesco should not be able to buy market share.

A new inquiry is still likely to prove futile. The decline of independent urban stores is bound to continue. The switch to more efficient methods has played a vital role in improving the health of the British economy, compared with Germany or Japan. Grocery shops will close or sell up until, as with Britain’s butchers, the only ones left are providing superior goods, services or convenience that supermarkets can never match.

The issue is who will take over. Co-ops and wholesaler groups are key players. The main absentee so far, however, is Wal-Mart. The US company is rapidly reconsidering the neighbourhood store. If Tesco and Sainsbury were stopped, or even had to sell shops, Wal-Mart would have a clear run.

Tesco has become arrogant. It lost its place of most-admired company because of its record on community and environmental issues, even though its achievement in expanding abroad from Poland to Thailand is unique and outstanding. Sir Terry and his successors need to try harder to win friends and to take a lead on environmental issues. But Tesco is not being attacked because it is an over-mighty baron. It is simply a tall poppy in a country whose attitude to business remains yobbishly insular. In industry after industry, we have destroyed leading companies for myopic, short-term reasons.

If a hobbled Tesco succumbs to Wal-Mart or to Carrefour of France, we shall have ourselves to blame. Some will be glad.

graham.searjeant@thetimes.co.uk

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