Deals

Walmart Confirms It's ‘Seriously’ Mulling an IPO for Asda Unit

  • Preparations for going public would ‘take years’: McKenna
  • U.K. regulators blocked Asda’s merger plan with Sainsbury

A customer places items from a display of bread goods into her shopping cart inside an Asda supermarket, the U.K. retail arm of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., in Watford, U.K.

Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg

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Walmart Inc. is mulling an initial public offering for its Asda unit, a listing that that could value the U.K. grocer at as much as an estimated 8.5 billion pounds ($11 billion).

News of a possible float of Britain’s fourth-largest supermarket comes only weeks after U.K. antitrust regulators blocked a planned merger with rival J Sainsbury Plc.