Carrefour will purchase 800 Dia outlets, but in doing so will have to close 56 of the stores it presently owns, of which 12 are located in Paris.
French regulations of fair competition necessitate the sales: the market must "exert sufficient competitive pressure to constrain the behavior of the merged entity, particularly in terms of price," stipulated L’Autorité de la concurrence.
That Carrefour will have to shut the doors of 12 outlets in the French capital is certainly a blow, as it is there that the retailer at present holds 30 per cent of the market share.
In France, such injunctions are effected based on the market share of a company; legislature therefore entails that retailers must not expand to a degree that makes their market share anticompetitive.
© 2014 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article written by Peter Donnelly
