Last week the following topics were discussed: selling alcohol drinks during at night, suspending the sale of Lenta network, developing the mobile retail business, selling the developer assets of the Eldorado founder by the Czech PPF Group.
The first meeting of the council of experts on developing the Russian trading activity took place in Minpromtorg on Monday. A stricter alternative to the governmental bill On Trade was found at the State Duma.
Minpromtorg offered to limit the alcohol selling time, to forbid selling beer at the stands and to oblige the sellers to ask the young clients for their passports.
The St.Petersburg government prepared an offer of making amendments to the Federal Law On alcohol turnover. The Governor of St.Petersburg offered to forbid selling beer and low-alcohol drinks at night as well as to forbid selling them at the retail selling points.
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The deal on purchasing 35.4% of Lenta network from its founder Oleg Zherebtsov by the foundation TPG Capital and VTB Capital was suspended. The purchasers accounted that all the minor shareholders of Lenta would confirm their withdrawal of the prior right for purchasing this share by September, 25th. But the American fund Moore Capital, which possesses less than 2% of the network, didn’t send its withdrawal. The representatives of TPG and VTB Capital suspect the fund of trying to purchase 35.4% of Lenta to the interest of Alfa-group.
The suspicions didn’t turn out to be vain – the American foundation outbid TPG and VTB for their offer of purchasing the network.
In spite of the crisis the Finnish network Prizma continues to open its stores and plans to launch its own logistic center in Russia. The retailer will launch the center as soon as the network numbers not less than 10 objects. Now four Prizma stores are open in St.Petersburg.
The product discount stores have still decided to accept payments by bank credit cards. Pyatyorochka and Kvartal are launching the card payment system.
The supermarket network Paterson decided to place second-issue bonds a 1.5 billion rubles. The new bonds’ circulation term will account three years.
Alexander Zanadvorov, the main owner of the Seventh Continent Network, has negotiated a payment delay with the major creditors. The French Natixis Bank, which controls about 50% of the credit a $560 million with a security of 74.81% of the network, agreed to postpone the debt recovery from this November for 7 years. The Finnish Nordea Bank, which lent the businessman another $427.5 million with a security of the shopping center Okhotniy Ryad, will wait for its money till 2014.
It also became known that the German trade operator Metro Group launches a retail shopping center of 20 million euro in Kirov. The operator refused to build this center 18 months ago due to some conflicts with the land area owner. The representatives of Metro Group point out that the conflicts were settled with the help of the governor Nikita Belykh.
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According to Euroset estimates, the total value of the mobile telephone sales during the third quarter of 2009 decreased at 31.6% to 7.1 million units. The market overcame the crisis bottom at the end of the second quarter – at the beginning of the third one. However, the company representatives say that the retail business will be able to finally recover not earlier than in 2011, when it reaches the indices of 2008.
The Euroset company, which has already sold some secondary assets, is going to sell Pro-Service (its mobile phone repair business) at 700-900 million rubles. The ideologist of establishing this company was Evgeny Chichvarkin, the retailer ex-co-owner.
MTS continues developing the monobranded network. The flag MTS store in a new concept produced together with the European company Vodafone was opened in St.Petersburg. This store became the second one in a new network format.
There appeared the information that MTS plans to close the deal on purchasing the Telephorum mobile stores in October, 2009. The operator is already searching for the contractors, who will paint the dealer’s stores to the company colours. Vympelkom Public Company (the Beeline brand) will suffer from Telephorum’s losing the independence most of all.
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In the near future the network Eldorado will open another 18 stores – the company negotiated the lease of the trade areas of Domotekhnika network, which left the market this summer. As a result Eldorado accounts to catch up GK Foxtrot with the number of stores and increase the market share at 4% in financial terms.
The Czech PPF Group purchased the shares of the development companies Advantage Group and RED from Igor Yakovlev, the founder of Eldorado. The Czechs paid $300 million for these assets and 51% of Eldorado itself (the loan of this sum was taken into account as payment). They also issued another $700 million in credits. The real assets will be transferred to ECM, the PPF holding (the joint company of PPF and the Czech developer ECM Group working in Russia, Czech Republic, Romania and China).
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The court obliged IKEA to pay off the debt a 285 million rubles to Sistemy Avtonomnogo Energosnabzheniya Ltd. for the electricity for the shopping center MEGA-Dybenko in St.Petersburg. Ingvar Kamprad, the owner of the Swedish retailer and developer, accused the Russian power engineering specialist of deception – they supposedly misbilled his company at 136 million euro.
The perfume and cosmetic network Rive Gauche is going to open a women fitness center in St.Petersburg. It will take about 400 square meters in the building, where the largest network store is functioning. The company representatives stated that opening a secondary business was a branding project and that the retailer wasn’t to continue the expansion to the fitness center market.
Jeans Symphony, a clothes retailer and distributor, started developing its own (and the partner ones) stores of Pierre Cardin men’s clothes. The next store under this brand will be opened in Krasnodar in spring 2010. Beginning of the active store launch is planned for the next autumn.
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