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Carrefour expecting acquisition offers

Carrefour, the fourth-largest Romanian retailer by turnover, will maintain its aggressive expansion strategy, both through organic growth and acquisitions, with management changes unlikely to affect these plans.

Officials are open to any proposal of sales of active local networks, provided the store sales surfaces exceed 800 square meters.'We are willing to analyze any offer which comes our way, but will not take the first step. If they want to sell, they know we have money to buy. Now we are analyzing another possibility of taking over a store network, but I cannot provide details on this matter,' said former CEO of Carrefour Romania, Jacobo Caller Celestino, quoted by Business Standard. According to several market sources, the envisaged network is G'market. Celestino added that there are several retail store chains interested to sell, and sources state that Trident and Ethos are also on the list. However, Celestino indicated that 'neither Primavara nor Ethos have made a proposal to date.' During his two years at the helm of Carrefour Romania, Celestino held talks with Artima, Plus Discount, Pic and La Fourmi, that resulted only in the French retailer's taking over in October 2007 the Artima supermarket network from the Enterprise Investors fund for 55 million euro. The former Carrefour CEO said that the other networks had insufficient sales space and were asking for prices in excess of what the retailer is willing to pay. Celestino believes there is still room for growth on the market, especially on the supermarket segment, involving numerous takeovers, and he expects only three major players to survive on the hypermarket segment and three or four national supermarket networks. Jacobo Caller Celestino, who will take over as head of Carrefour Russia, believes that Carrefour Romania can add several hundred supermarkets to its present 12 hypermarkets. In Romania, Carrefour's competitors on the hypermarket segment are Auchan, Cora, Real, Pic and Kaufland, while principal supermarket retailers are Billa, Mega Image, Interex and Spar. Sursa: http://www.rompress.ro

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