The Carrefour group at the end of last year took over the 86 Billa supermarket chain in a deal put at almost EUR100 million. This is the third largest deal in the local retail sector, after the acquisition of 20 Real hypermarkets by Auchan and of Plus Discount by Lidl.
Carrefour is not at the first acquisition on the market, but this is its biggest and most complex. Billa has 86 stores in Romania, as well as more than 1.5 billion lei (EUR300 million) sales and 3,000 employees. An acquisition such as Billa requires a more extensive integration process that may take several years to complete.
“The Billa brand will be gone from the Romanian market by the end of 2017. The stores will operate as Carrefour and inside, the supermarkets will keep the best of both brands,” says the French executive who has been running the retailer’s operations since 2013. He will not say how much Carrefour will invest in remodeling and rebranding, but the whole process should cost tens of millions of euros, according to ZF’s calculations.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)