Russia’s retail sector faces the biggest acquisition in its history. The Russian low price chain Kopeika will be taken over by supermarket chain X5 for around 51 billion rubles (about 1.2 billion Euro). Kopeika is owned by a Russian billionaire and like Magnit and Pjatjorotshka one of the leading retail chains in the country.

X5 is already the market leader in Russia and the acquisition will increase its outlets by 700 to 2,300. The annual turnover will jump to over 8 billion Euros.

Lately, there have been more and more large acquisitions in Russia. Just a few days ago Pepsico bought the Russian producer of juice and dairy products Vimm-Bill-Dann for 3.8 billion USD.

After the economic crisis the still very fragmented retail trade experienced a resounding boom. Purchasing power has increased significantly in Russia in the past year.

X5 – which now buys Kopeika – is part of the consortium Alfa Group, owned by oligarch Michail Fridman and had sales of 8.7 billion USD in 2009. Kopeika came sixth in the retail industry with a turnover of 2 billion USD in 2008.

Kopeika was founded in 1998 in Moscow. At that time it was Russia’s first low-cost brand, and was developed in the style of the German chains Aldi and Lidl. Kopeika is a corporation where 100 percent of the shares are owned by Russian billionaire Nikolai Tsvetkov’s, leader of the bank Uralsib.
The other major retailers in Russia are Magnit (turnover: 5.4 billion USD), Lenta (1.8 billion), O’Key (1.6 billion), Dixy (1.3 billion) and Seventh Continent (1.2 billion).

In addition, many international trade groups have established activities in Russia. These include the German wholesaler Metro Group with about 4.7 billion USD in revenue in 2009, and the world market leader Wal-Mart from the U.S. Wal-Mart was reportedly also interested in taking over Kopeika.

http://www.russia-media.ru

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