PARIS, June 11 (Reuters) – The new leadership of Casino will detail its strategy plan to revive the troubled French food retailer towards the end of the year, new CEO Philippe Palazzi said on Tuesday.
“We are currently working on a plan to boost value.” Palazzi said, adding the detailed plan would be unveiled “at the end of the year.”
Casino, France’s seventh-largest supermarket group by market share, was brought to the verge of default after years of debt-fuelled acquisitions and a declining market share.
In March, Casino completed its financial restructuring and Rocket Queen a new leadership team formed around Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky took control.
Shareholders meeting on Tuesday are set to rubber-stamp the appointments of the new board.
The new leadership has promised Casino will focus on low prices, investing in stores and on increasing the amount of money it spends on marketing. It also aims to improve its private label offerings and generate synergies across the group’s store banners.
Palazzi is in charge of a slimmed-down group as Casino has already reached agreements with French rivals on the sale of 288 supermarkets and hypermarkets in France, leaving it with upmarket brand Monoprix and city-centre stores Franprix.
“Our ambition is to regain our ranking in French retail and for that we will have the best offering in terms of convenience retail,” he said.
The sale sharply reduces Casino’s size to some 8 billion euros in sales from 33.6 billion euros in 2022, halving its market share in France to around 3%, analysts have said. (Reporting by Dominique Vidalon; Editing by Tassilo Hummel/Sudip Kar-Gupta)
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