HONG KONG, June 4 (Reuters) - British retailer Tesco is exploring the sale of its South Korean operations,valued at about $6 billion, and has hired HSBC as thefinancial adviser, people familiar with the matter told Reuterson Thursday.
The potential sale of Tesco's biggest operations outside ofits home market in the U.K. comes after the company unveiled inApril its worst ever annual loss, hit by a one-off 7 billionpounds ($10.7 billion) write-down.
Tesco and HSBC declined to comment. The sources declined tobe identified as the discussions are confidential. ($1 = 0.6525 pounds) (Reporting by Denny Thomas and Prakash Chakravarti atIFR/BasisPoint; Additional reporting by James Davey in LONDON;Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)