Last week the European retailer Carrefour declared its resignation from the Russian market, the Federal Antimonopoly Service approved the application from X5 Retail Group of purchasing the Paterson supermarkets, the co-owners of the Altyn holding were arrested, etc.
Last week the most important and unexpected news was that the largest European retail network Carrefour decided to sell its Russian business. The French retailer, which recently opened 2 hypermarkets in Russia, accounted for its decision that there were no perspectives to take the leading positions at the Russian market.
Most of the examined Retailer.RU readers (37%) think that Carrefour was tired of fighting with the Russian officials. 32% of the respondents said that the project was launched at the wrong place and time.
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The Magnit network declared the unaudited working results for the nine months of 2009. The retailer’s net proceeds increased at 30.96% up to 121 646 billion rubles as compared with the last year. During this time the company opened 399 stores.
Sistema RegionMart Ltd. published the financial working results for the nine months of 2009. The company’s proceeds increased at 27.5% and came up to 10.2 billion rubles.
It also became known that the fish stores under the Ocean brand will be opened already in October: the company Nord Stream from Murmansk is establishing the retail network in Moscow and St.Petersburg. However, it will start from the stands selling the traditional British dish: fish & chips.
Oleg Zherebtsov, the founder of Lenta, who received $110.6 million for his 35.4% of the network from TPG Capital fund and VTB Capital the week before last, started spending this money by paying off the credits and compensations. After all payments the founder of Lenta will still have about $25 million: he might invest this sum in his product network Norma.
On Tuesday the first meeting of the Lenta trading network board of directors after the shareholders change was held. Timophey Demchenko, head of the direct investment and special projects department, was elected the chairman of board of directors.
X5 Retail Group signed an agreement with the owners of internet-stores bolero.ru (specializing in selling books and media-production) and www.003.ru (sales of electronic and household equipment) to establish a joint venture. At the first stage of the project it’s exclusively planned to sell the nonfoods in Moscow and St.Petersburg. In 2010 X5 might possibly take a decision to establish a new brand in the Russian internet-selling business.
There appeared the information that the Federal Antimonopoly Service would only approve the application from X5 Retail Group of purchasing the Paterson supermarkets if X5 sold 11 purchased stores in St.Petersburg at once after concluding the deal. This is necessary in order the X5 share at the St.Petersburg market doesn’t exceed the present 35%.
On October, 15th the second premium-class supermarket “Zelenyi Perekryostok” opened in Moscow. It took 2800 square meters at the shopping center Smolenskiy Passage at Smolenskaya square.
In April, 2010 the trading retail network Auchan is to distribute a part of its shares among all Russian employees of the company. This was declared by Jan-Pierre Germain, General Director of Auchan-Russia.
The Auchan network revealed its plans up to the end of 2010. Four new stores will begin working in 2009, another six ones – in 2010.
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On October, 11th the term of making amendments to the bill On Trade expired. The trading networks are still under the risk of loosing the fight for this bill since it might only become tougher. Thus, the Speaker of the State Duma Boris Gryzlov offered to describe the detailed mechanism of the mark up state control, and Vladimir Gruzdev, the co-owner of the Seventh Continent, offered to decrease the children dominance limit from 25% to 15%.
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At the beginning of the week the couple Antonina Babosyuk and Vladimir Fenkov, the co-owners of the Altyn holding, were arrested on suspicion of smuggling.
Even Evgeniy Chichvarkin expressed his opinion on the Altyn case: he doesn’t believe in the “investigation fare intentions” regarding the Altyn company and thinks that the industry leaders are just being “polished off”.
Meanwhile, the Agency on Economic Crime and Corruption (Financial Police) started to check the activity of the jewelry hypermarket network Altyn in Kazakhstan.
The Altyn holding itself gave comments on the smuggling case for the first time at its web-site, where it issued an appeal to mass media. The holding declared that while the investigation was still going on, the company wouldn’t give any estimates. Altyn thinks that the competitors are guilty of everything.
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Last week it was declared that Katerina Laryushkina was appointed the new financial director of Detskiy Mir – Centre Public Corporation. Alexey Kurach, who earlier took this position, became the Deputy General Director of Sistema Invest Public Corporation for economy and finance.
The M.Video network declared the unaudited results of retail sales and the sales of the comparable stores for the third quarter and the nine months of 2009. For the nine months the network’s retail sales came up to 57 552 million rubles incl. VAT, which is 5% more as compared with the same nine months in 2008.
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MTS established 5000 payment accepting outlets in not more than 200 meters from the Euroset stores. This spring MTS stopped accepting the payments through the retailer’s cash registers.
The Federal Antimonopoly Service suspected Euroset of breaking its direction on the discrimination inadmissibility while selling the mobile operators contracts. A fine and adjustment of the operator contracts threaten the retailer.
The cassation authority proved the decision to block Euroset sister’s accounts at the MTS action, which demanded 298 million rubles.
The digest was prepared by Retailer.RU and was translated by iTrex company. Itrex is a translation bureau. It offers written and oral translation, notary certification and a lot more. Itrex does work with every language: European, Eastern languages and others. Itrex does work with every topic: technical, legal, financial, business, etc.
