French retailer Casino has apparently won the bid to buy Carrefour’s Thai operations, according to a report from the Financial Times.
The deal involves 40 Thai supermarkets, and was made for around €700m (US$957m), the Financial Times report said without naming its sources.
British retailer Tesco had previously been expected to win the bidding for Carrefour’s Thai outlets, but with Tesco already the largest retailer in the country, the hot favourite may have been put off by competition restrictions.
Casino owns a 36 per cent stake in Thailand’s Big C Supercentre chain, the country’s second-largest hypermarket operator after Tesco.
Carrefour had been hoping for around US$1bn for its South East Asian operations, of which Thailand accounts for about two thirds. Malaysia accounts for the majority of the remainder with 19 stores, along with Singapore’s two outlets.
