A spokesman for Tesco said the company had no comment to make on the media speculation, which was in an article in 'Moneytoday', according to the traders.

Tesco's shares were up by 1.5 percent in early session trading, the top-performing stock on the blue-chip FTSE 100 index <.FTSE>, which was flat.

(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta; Editing by Lionel Laurent)