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LONDON, March 16 (Reuters) - British advertising group WPP has bid for a majority stake in Dunnhumby, the customerdata business put up for sale by Tesco, a personfamiliar with the situation said on Monday.
Dunnhumby, which gathers and analyses data from almost 1billion shoppers globally to help companies create customerloyalty and personalisation programmes, has been put up for saleas part of a drive by Tesco's new boss Dave Lewis to slash costsand sell assets to mend the group's finances.
Tesco, Britain's biggest retailer, is pursuing the sale of amajority stake, rather than an outright exit or flotation, aseparate source told Reuters in February.
That source had said around six or seven parties, includingprivate equity-led bidding groups, had shown a serious interestin the business.
WPP, which has increased its presence in market research andanalytics in recent years, declined to comment.
Tesco, which saw its shares rise 4 percent in afternoontrading, also declined to comment.
Lewis is plotting the supermarket's fightback from years ofmarket share losses, an accounting scandal and debt-ratingsdowngrades.
As part of that plan, Goldman Sachs was appointed toexplore strategic options for Dunnhumby, which analysts value atup to 2 billion pounds ($3 billion).
Analysts said U.S. food retailer Kroger was also apossible suitor for Dunnhumby.($1 = 0.6756 pounds) (Reporting by Kate Holton and James Davey; Editing by GuyFaulkonbridge and David Holmes)
