Last week the Sberbank credit committee approved the plan of transferring the assets of the Mosmart network to the ownership of Evgeny Novitskiy, a member of AFK “Sistema”’s board of directors. Purchase of the operator’s shares of ZAO “Mosmart” and “Gipertsentr “Development” Ltd., which owns the network’s real estates, was approved. The new shareholder will receive 75% of ZAO, the other 25% will be left for the funds Eastern Property Holdings (EPH) and ENR Russia Invest SA. Mikhail Bezelyanskiy and Andrei Shelukhin, the founders of “Mosmart”, will totally leave the capital of the network’s operator.
In autumn all the employees of the Russian department of Auchan retailer will receive a chance to become its shareholders. The company can sell them a package of the total cost up to 1.5 billion rubles. In November, 2008 284 managers of the highest and middle level received the right to buy the company’s shares. As a whole, the optional program is valid in the company since 1977.
It also became known that the Auchan group is going to be at law with a small Moscow store “Aurchan” for using the trade mark similar in sound. The representatives of “Aurchan” were surprised by the claims from the French network: nobody addressed the company for settling the question in the pre-trial procedure. However, it’s planned to rename the supermarket in June.
Till the end of the year the network of “Auchan” hypermarkets may increase the number of its stores in Novosibirsk up to three.
The “Vester” group closed all its stores in Ukraine due to the low buying ability of the local population. The company closed one hypermarket-compact before the New Year, the rest two were closed this May.
The company “Seventh Continent” decided to issue the stock bonds a 5.8 billion rubles par value of one thousand rubles. The term of the issue turnover is two years. The bonds’ retirement is effected in parts.
Oleg Vysotskiy, the general director of “Pyatyorochka” network, informed that by 2014 Х5 Retail Group is going to increase the share of its trade marks in “Pyatyorochka” network up to 50%. Now the share of its own trade marks is 5%. Moreover, the network plans to create private marks, which will be sold in other X5 network units – the supermarkets “Petekryostok” and hypermarkets “Karusel”. The products representing the grocery and the frozen products will already appear in the stores in autumn.
Till the end of the year Х5 Retail group plans to open another 3 “Pyatyorochka” supermarkets and one “Perekryostok” supermarket in Nizhniy Novgorod.
In Thursday Lev Khasis, the chief executive director of Х5 Retail Group, informed that in the near future the company might conclude a big deal of joining with a Ukrainian network. The retail experts are sure that the matter is about the Ukrainian company “Kvioza-Trade” managing the “Velika Kishenya” network, which in Russian means “A Big Wallet”. The Russian retailer is going to receive 100% of the company, including in exchange for its own shares. The cost of the network, not taking into consideration the debt, is estimated at $400-450 million.
The representatives of the company X5 Retail Group N.V. informed that on June, 11th they will start placing the ruble bonds of the forth series a 8 billion rubles with the retirement term of 7 years and with an offer in 2 years from the moment of their placing. The issuer will be the X5 sister company – “IKS 5 FINANS” Ltd. Placing will take place on a public subscription.
Х5 Retail Group considers the possibility of creating a virtual mobile operator. The project is planned to be launched till the end of the year. Lev Khasis informed that one of the operators from the “Big 3” would be selected as a partner.
Lev Khasis, the chief executive director, informed that the X5 company received an offer to re-register the company’s headquarters to St.Petersburg. Now the retailer is holding on the negotiations with the city authorities about re-registration in St.Petersburg, which might take place in the coming years.
Last week the draft of the “Code of the trade networks’ honest practices at the co-operation with the food products suppliers” appeared. The Association of the Retail Companies (AKORT) is planning to introduce this Code next week. The authors consider the main aim of the Code to be the “stable and effective co-operation of the trade networks and the suppliers”. The document includes the description of criteria of selecting the suppliers into the network, the liabilities of the parties for breaking the deliveries and payment, the description of “non-discriminatory conditions” of the suppliers’ access to the network, etc. The official introduction will take place the next week.
The Tushinskiy Court of Moscow started considering the case of “Arbat Prestige”. Vladimir Nekrasov and Sergey Shnayder are accused of impairing the state a 115 million rubles, while the businessmen do not accept the accusations. The case includes more than 100 volumes, and the state prosecution announced 27 witnesses.
“Arbat Prestige” appealed against the auction on selling off the property mortgaged to Nomos-Bank for providing the credit a $50 million. In 2008 the Arbitration Court of Moscow satisfied the bank’s auction on recovering $27.5 million on the credit and transferring the recovery into the mortgage.
The “Tekhnosila” network is left without several major suppliers. In particular, Panasonic, Sharp, Whirpool, the distributional companies “Pirit” and Kraftway have stopped the shipments due to the retailer’s debt. In total, they accounted up to 25% of the network’s turnover. The “Tekhnosila” leaders promised to resume working with the leading brands in the near future.
The association of manufacturers sent an offer to Rospotrebnadzor to restrict returning complicated household appliances to the store. The reason of this is the irresponsibility of the buyers, who often return the goods only because they do not like them any more.
Ralf Ringer, the Russian producer of male shoes, decided to open its own retail network of 20 stores in St.Petersburg. The company is going to increase its profitability in this way. Till now the company’s production has been sold only in one trademark store situated in Gostinnyi Dvor and through the partners.
The company “Sprandi International”, which is a part of GK Sprandi, sent an application of its bankruptcy to the Arbitration Court of Moscow. At the beginning of May “Sprandi” Ltd., another company of the group, which managed the clothes deliveries, addressed the Arbitration Court with the similar application. The network included 100 sportswear stores, including 60 franchising ones.
Oleg Yakovlev closed all the “Avenue. Stil’ Bolshogo Goroda” stores, which he was going to rebrand in RU network at the end of last year. This is already the second retail project of the businessman after “Banana-Mama”, the network of goods for children. At the end of December, 2008 there were only 4 “Avenue” stores.
The agroindustrial company “Belaya Dacha” is going to invest $60 million in building up an outlet-center in the south-east of Moscow. Now they are finishing projecting and building the center at the company’s territory, where the hypermarket “Auchan” is already situated, near the town of Kotelniki.
The building networks “Metrika” and “Vimos” stopped the process of joining. Evgeny Lebedev and Vladimir Guriev, the networks’ owners, weren’t able to find any general approach for managing the business. At present 19 “Vimos” stores from the 27 ones, which are already the property of “Stroyformat” Ltd. (the Metrika’s operator), are closed for inventory accounting. As soon as it finishes, the stores will resume operating under the formed physical bodies of TD “Vimos”.
The Federal Antimonopoly Service launched an attack on the sellers of cosmetics in apothecary stores. According to the officials’ opinion, in some apothecary stores the share of the goods, which are not medicine drugs, increases 70%. L`Oreal became the first company, which complied with FAS’s demands. From now on the company will sell the goods of Vichy and La Roche Posay brands as cosmetics, and not as the medical drugs.
On June, 1st and 2nd «Retailer congress. The Second Season» took place in Nakhabino in the Moscow region. The Congress joint about 150 owners and top-managers of retail networks, associations, producing companies and service providers.
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