British retail giant Tesco eyes Romania

Tesco, the biggest British retailer, with 62 billion pounds in sales, is eyeing Romania in view of making its entry on the market with its hypermarket division, market sources told ZF.

Under the current circumstances, where big retail chains have slowed down expansion significantly and even operated redundancies in order to consolidate their business hit by consumption declines, there is a big chance the entry of a retail giant will be done via an acquisition. The only hypermarket chains currently active on the Romanian market are international chains Carrefour, Real (Metro Group), Cora, Auchan, and Kaufland, which made around three billion euros in cumulated sales in 2009, down 10% on the previous year.
“We have no current plans to enter the Romanian market. In general, we don’t answer speculations on our company’s future plans,” Tom Hoskin, Head of Corporate Media at Tesco, told ZF.