Sainsbury’s (SBRY) sale of catalogue retailer Argos to private equity firm Swift for £120m marks the latest chapter in a sweeping corporate transformation.
The FTSE 100 grocery giant, which holds a 15 per cent share of the UK grocery market, once operated a sprawling empire across furniture, DIY, banking and homeware.
That empire has been systematically dismantled over successive years, with thousands of job cuts, store closures and asset sales reshaping the business entirely.
Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, said the original Argos acquisition was a move to “diversify out of groceries.”
Mould added: “As often seems to be the case with UK supermarkets, Sainsbury’s has cycled between trying to cover lots of different areas and a focus on the core activity of selling food and essentials to households.”
Chris Beauchamp, chief market analyst at IG, echoed this assessment, saying: “Argos had long felt like a relic of the previous plan for Sainsbury’s, one that has been superseded.”
Sainsbury’s bought Home Retail Group, which included both Argos and Habitat, for £1.4bn just a decade ago.
At the time of that acquisition, Argos operated 845 standalone stores focused on tech products, toys and household appliances, a figure that had already fallen to 573 by the start of the pandemic.
When Simon Roberts took over as chief executive in June 2020, the retailer announced a further 420 standalone Argos closures, and by the time of the Swift sale only 201 remained alongside 466 concessions inside larger Sainsbury’s stores.
The human cost of these changes has been significant, with Roberts’ 2020 restructuring alone costing 3,500 jobs through Argos store closures and the removal of meat, fish and deli counters.
A further 1,400 roles were lost in 2023 following the closure of two Argos warehouses, with another 1,500 put at risk that same year as bakeries and a call centre shut.
In 2025, Sainsbury’s closed all 61 remaining in-store cafes, patisseries and pizza counters, cutting a further 3,000 jobs from its workforce.
This February, an additional 300 jobs were lost as the tech team and Argos deliveries were restructured, bringing the total planned cuts to 9,700 across successive rounds.
The financial arm has been dismantled with similar determination, piece by piece, over recent years.
NatWest purchased Sainsbury’s Bank’s personal loan, credit card and retail deposit business for £125m in 2024, while Argos Financial Services’ credit cards were sold to NewDay Group.
Three months after those sales, the retailer’s 1,370 ATMs were sold to NoteMachine, followed by the sale of travel money operations to Irish firm Fexco in 2025.
Allianz UK subsequently took over car and home insurance for existing customers, and the Qatar Investment Authority sold its stake in Sainsbury’s that December, ending a near-20-year run as the grocer’s biggest shareholder.
Sainsbury’s core supermarket estate has remained broadly stable throughout this period, with 609 supermarkets and 885 convenience stores today compared to 598 and 813 respectively in 2020.
The grocer is not alone in this strategic reversal, with Tesco and M&S both having sold their banking arms to Barclays and HSBC respectively in recent years.
Yet the pull toward diversification has not entirely disappeared, as Sainsbury’s launched Smart Charge for electric vehicles in 2024, and both its Tu clothing brand and Habitat continue to operate within its larger stores.