Philip Clarke is to step down as chief executive of Tesco, Britain’s biggest supermarket, the company announced on Monday as it issued a fresh profit warning for the first half of the year.

He is to be replaced by Dave Lewis, a Unilever executive, in October.

Current trading conditions are “more challenging than we anticipated”, Tesco wrote in a statement.

The supermarket giant has suffered from poor sales in the past two years. In 2012, it shocked markets with its first profit warning in two decades.

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