Top Brands: Consumer goods distribution is vulnerable to crisis

Wael El Ghadban, general manager and one of the shareholders of Top Brands Distribution (TBD), says the distributors’ dependence on banks’ resources and on the producers makes them vulnerable to the financial crisis.

“For the time being, we can only talk about small signs of the international economic crisis, on our market. Consumer goods distribution is vulnerable, given that bank credits are very much used on this market, and that we are already seeing lending opportunities restricted and interests going up,” says El Ghadban. TBD, the second largest consumer goods distributor on the Romanian market, could reach turnover worth over 335 million euros this year, amid higher volumes generated by its more extensive coverage. “We are preserving our 50% sales growth rate forecast for this year, on 2007. (…)”, says Wael El Ghadban.