The end of Belgian supermarket chains Match and Smatch raises renewed questions about Louis Delhaize Group‘s future. In particular, the fate of the seven ailing Cora-hypermarkets seems doomed.
Continued losses
It has long been clear that something needed to be done at Louis Delhaize Group (not to be confused with the Ahold Delhaize group, although the latter’s Belgian branch was founded by the same family), after years of almost continuous losses. After the Bouriez family sold the Romanian and French operations to Carrefour and the Luxembourg operations to E.Leclerc, the sale of most of the Match and Smatch supermarkets to Colruyt Group was therefore not too big a surprise.
