Take with
caution
The news
should however be taken with the necessary caution: the business paper says theproject is in a very early stage and Carrefour is not yet working with a business
bank.
French LSA
is also pointing out that the Chinese activities are not officially on display
and it says CEO George Plassat said that “major
divestments are behind us”. To the question whether they were going to divest
more assets, he answered: “Will we remain in the same situation everywhere?
That is not certain. But I have no need, nor do I want to, monetize any important
assets.”
Number 4 in
China
According
to that same source Carrefour wants to use the money from the operation to
speed up its expansion on the Chinese market. Euromonitor’s stats show that the
French giant only has a market share of 6.9% in the vast country: in 2006 that
was 9.1% – a trend CEO Plassat wants to turn around as soon as possible.
At the
moment Carrefour is the number four in China, with sales of 6.4 billion euro in
2012 (8% of company sales). Market leader, Sun Art Retail Group, is almost
twice as big in China, with a market share of 13.6%.
