Billa is now held by Germany’s Rewe, which is also the owner of Penny Market retail chain in Romania.
The two parties have been in talks for almost a year but have only made significant progress in the past month, market sources told ZF. The information about the sale of Billa first surfaced last year after Rewe sold the Italian operations to Carrefour.
The officials of the group at the time said they wanted to focus only on the markets where they held a top position, which is not the case in Romania, where Billa is the smallest retailer second only to Real, which kept four hypermarkets after selling 20 to Auchan.
Carrefour vied with Mega Image and a private equity firm over the acquisition of the Billa chain in Romania, but the two dropped out of the race eventually.
The takeover of Billa will allow Carrefour, the second leading retailer in Romania, with more than EUR1 billion sales last year, to add about 85 supermarkets with more than EUR300 million sales in 2014 to its network.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)