Bought from German Rewe group
If the antitrust authority approves the deal, Carrefour will add 86 stores to its Romanian portfolio. The world’s second largest supermarket chain (trailing Wal-Mart) will buy Billa Romania, which used to be German Rewe‘s property, for an undisclosed fee.
Billa, founded in 1953 in Austria, has 3,645 stores in 8 countries and had a 13.02 billion euro turnover (in 2014). Its very first Romanian store opened in 1999, in Bucharest. Rewe had already sold its Hungarian Billa stores to Spar.
Carrefour has been in Romania since 2001 and had 183 stores before the acquisition: 29 hypermarkets, 100 Market supermarkets, 43 Express convenience stores, 10 smaller Contact stores and a web shop.
Carrefour will not only become the biggest in Romania thanks to this deal, it will also solidify the French company’s position as the largest in Europe thanks to more than 12,000 stores in 35 countries, 380,000 employees and 12.5 million customers on a daily basis. Group turnover reached 100.5 billion euro last year.
