Somerfield’s future was decided on Wednesday after its private-equity owners agreed to sell the supermarket chain to the Co-operative Group, having dropped its price tag from £2.5bn to £1.57bn.

Somerfield’s owners – a consortium of Apax Partners, Barclays Capital, Robert Tchenguiz, the property tycoon, and Kaupthing, the Icelandic bank – took the chain private for £1.2bn including debt in 2005.