Its Japanese operation could be next, though its partner there, Seiyu, is well established.
Without assets to generate the cash that Seiyu needs to cover its interest bill, the firm could collapse.
Seiyu is running the grocer more attentively than most of its established businesses.
They have already sold four subsidiaries and shut 16 others, shrinking the number of Seiyu-group companies from 101 to 81.
Yet if Seiyu is ever to make a go of this new approach, it will have to overcome its huge financial problems.
TCF's and Seiyu's own debt continue to weigh on the company, the danger is that Seiyu will have to sell its best assets.
Wal-Mart is also looking to bulk up in developed retail markets like Japan where it operates more than 400 stores under the Seiyu banner.
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Like most big retailers, Seiyu started as a private railway company.
Ryohin Keikaku, a subsidiary of retail giant Seiyu, was prompted to list its shares when foreign investors became interested after the company opened a store in London.
Daiei and other domestic chains such as Seiyu and Ito-Yokado are all struggling to cope with colossal debts and imprudent diversification, and their underfunded outlets are getting tatty.
In Japan Wal-Mart also decided to take a small bite first, buying a 6% stake in retailer Seiyu in early 2002, then upping it to 34% later in the year.
Worryingly, as well as selling subsidiaries that have nothing to do with retailing, Seiyu has also got rid of part of Muji's owner, Ryohin Keikaku, and Family Mart, a convenience-store operator, both good businesses.
The cash they raise will be used to pay creditors and to invest in the grocery business, which, to judge by the Seiyu supermarket opposite the company's headquarters in Ikebukuro, badly needs a face-lift.
Learning a lesson from its experience in Mexico, where it had to add to its Cifra stake by buying shares at ever-higher prices on the open market, Wal-Mart purchased warrants to potentially raise its Seiyu position to 67%.
Learning a lesson from its experience in Mexico, where it had to add to its Cifra stake by buying shares at ever higher prices on the open market, Wal-Mart purchased warrants to potentially raise its Seiyu position to 67%.
The Seibu Saison group of companies, of which Seiyu is the nucleus, owned track running from the Chichibu mountains west of Tokyo to Ikebukuro and Shinjuku in the city centre although the railway and the retailer parted company in the 1970s.
After its first four attempts at malls, which were a disaster, Mr Allen now thinks Seiyu has learnt the tricks of the trade, offering super-cheap leases to the crowd-pulling stores so that money-earning small retailers will want to open up too.
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