Wal-Mart, the largest US retailer, has said it believes it could see “extraordinary opportunities” in the global retail landscape created by the disruption of financial markets.

Lee Scott, chief executive, told investors and analysts this week that “there are probably things that the government might allow you to do that they would not have allowed you to do in the past”, while saying that the retailer would take a “thoughtfully aggressive” approach to any opportunities.

He included the possibility of Wal-Mart and its Sam’s Club warehouse chain acquiring sites from retailers that were going out of business, with the chance to “negotiate very good rents”.

Bernard Sosnick, retail analyst at Gilford Securities, said Wal-Mart could make a potentially attractive buyer for the leases of retailer’s such as Mervyn’s, a bankrupt chain of 149 department stores based in California, or Linens N Things, a bankrupt home furnishings retailer.

“If you are a local politician, do you want those stores to go dark? Or do you want to have Wal-Mart taking them over and creating local jobs?” he said.

Mr Scott’s remarks came as Wal-Mart, whose US sales will exceed $300bn this year, continues to slow the expansion of its network of more than 2,500 supercenters. It plans to open between 142 to 157 of the stores next year, down from an expected 191 this year, and 218 in 2007.

But the retailer has stressed that it was also looking at new smaller store formats and an enhanced focus on on-line sales to drive growth.

Eduardo Castro-Wright, the head of Wal-Mart’s US store division, argued that the amount of potential additional market that Wal-Mart could address in 15 leading US markets “is bigger than the entire retail market of India and Russia combined”.

He argued that new store formats, which include a smaller “high-efficiency” version of its supercenter that will be the retailer’s “second growth platform”, could help drive significant expansion. The new stores, he said, would support a parallel expansion of Wal-Mart’s on-line presence, where “site-to-store” pick-up orders now account for about half its online sales.

“On-line is, without doubt, a very significant opportunity for us, and one that you will see us invest much more in the future.”

Mr Scott also talked about further moves by Wal-Mart to “expand the fence” of its operations beyond pure retail operations, such as a long-term agreement with the largest US online contact lens provider, 1-800-contact, that includes an in-store presence and the possibility of direct investment in the supplier.

Mr Scott played down the possibility of Wal-Mart resuming a bid to secure a bank licence, after it withdrew its attempt to secure an industrial bank licence two years ago in the face of concerted opposition from banks and from labour groups.

However, in an indication of the retailer’s desire to expand its financial services offering, he said Wal-Mart had been preparing to launch a mortgage product with a financial partner in the weeks before the worsening of the mortgage market.

The retailer’s planned capital spending in the US for the next three years is going to be focused around remodelling its existing stores and taking steps to improve their efficiency.

Wal-Mart says new initiatives will include item-by-item RFID electronic product codes in clothing, and the use of “gravity loaded” shelves that are filled directly from its back-room storage.

Bill Simon, head of Wal-Mart’s US store operations, noted that the retailer had more warehouse square footage in its stores than it had in its network of distribution centres and wanted to apply principles developed in its distribution centres at a store level.