When a dozen customers are jostling at the till trying to buy the same packet of cornflakes it probably means the price is too low. When a dozen companies are scrambling to buy the supermarket, it probably means someone is selling an asset they ought to be holding onto.

This is the message from an extraordinary corporate bunfight going on in south-east Asia, where Carrefour, the world’s second-biggest retailer, has attracted a field of significantly more than 10 bidders for the sale of 61 supermarkets in Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore.

The bidding frenzy raises a number of questions, not least why Lars Olofsson, Carrefour’s relatively new chief executive, is so keen to bale out of a region in which the company invested $150m only three years ago.