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.