British and Japanese retail giants along with local operators are in an auction battle to take over the Southeast Asian business of French supermarket chain Carrefour, reports said yesterday.
Britain’s Tesco is among more than 10 bidders for Carrefour’s assets in the region, which total 61 stores in Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, the Financial Times (FT) said.
Singapore-based retail group Dairy Farm and French retailer Casino are also in the bidding, but US titan Wal-Mart has not entered the race, the FT said.
Company executives from Carrefour Singapore and Dairy Farm were not immediately available to comment. Japan’s Aeon group also declined to comment on a report in the Nikkei Shimbun business daily that it hoped to expand into Southeast Asia via the Carrefour auction to make up for sluggish consumer demand at home.
Aeon acquired Carrefour’s Japanese operations in 2005, five years after Carrefour entered Japan.
Malaysia’s deputy trade minister Mukhriz Mahathir had said in August that Carrefour was believed to be looking to divest its business in the country, where it has 19 stores.
Carrefour also has 40 stores in Thailand and two in Singapore.
The French retail giant on Tuesday said it made a net profit of 82 million euros (US$104 million) in the first half, after a loss in the same period of last year.
At the results announcement, Carrefour chief executive Lars Olofsson refused to comment on the group’s plans in Asia amid speculation that he wants to raise money to fund an ambitious revamp of hypermarkets in Europe.
Tesco, the world’s third-biggest retailer behind Wal-Mart and Carrefour, has also declined to comment on the Asian auction. The British group has been steadily expanding in the region, notably through smaller “express” stores.
Carrefour’s Web site says international markets account for 57 percent of the group’s total sales and that future growth will likely come from China, Indonesia, Brazil, Poland and Turkey.
The FT said Carrefour has no intention of abandoning China, which accounts for 70 percent of the group’s stores in Asia.
It also plans to remain in Indonesia and Taiwan, the report said.
BUILDUP: US General Dan Caine said Chinese military maneuvers are not routine exercises, but instead are ‘rehearsals for a forced unification’ with Taiwan China poses an increasingly aggressive threat to the US and deterring Beijing is the Pentagon’s top regional priority amid its rapid military buildup and invasion drills near Taiwan, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Tuesday. “Our pacing threat is communist China,” Hegseth told the US House of Representatives Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense during an oversight hearing with US General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Beijing is preparing for war in the Indo-Pacific as part of its broader strategy to dominate that region and then the world,” Hegseth said, adding that if it succeeds, it could derail
CHIP WAR: The new restrictions are expected to cut off China’s access to Taiwan’s technologies, materials and equipment essential to building AI semiconductors Taiwan has blacklisted Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯), dealing another major blow to the two companies spearheading China’s efforts to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chip technologies. The Ministry of Economic Affairs’ International Trade Administration has included Huawei, SMIC and several of their subsidiaries in an update of its so-called strategic high-tech commodities entity list, the latest version on its Web site showed on Saturday. It did not publicly announce the change. Other entities on the list include organizations such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, as well as companies in China, Iran and elsewhere. Local companies need
CRITICISM: It is generally accepted that the Straits Forum is a CCP ‘united front’ platform, and anyone attending should maintain Taiwan’s dignity, the council said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it deeply regrets that former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) echoed the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) “one China” principle and “united front” tactics by telling the Straits Forum that Taiwanese yearn for both sides of the Taiwan Strait to move toward “peace” and “integration.” The 17th annual Straits Forum yesterday opened in Xiamen, China, and while the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) local government heads were absent for the first time in 17 years, Ma attended the forum as “former KMT chairperson” and met with Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Chairman Wang Huning (王滬寧). Wang
CROSS-STRAIT: The MAC said it barred the Chinese officials from attending an event, because they failed to provide guarantees that Taiwan would be treated with respect The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) on Friday night defended its decision to bar Chinese officials and tourism representatives from attending a tourism event in Taipei next month, citing the unsafe conditions for Taiwanese in China. The Taipei International Summer Travel Expo, organized by the Taiwan Tourism Exchange Association, is to run from July 18 to 21. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) on Friday said that representatives from China’s travel industry were excluded from the expo. The Democratic Progressive Party government is obstructing cross-strait tourism exchange in a vain attempt to ignore the mainstream support for peaceful development
RSS