Metro, a hypermarket operator with a daughter, Media Markt, that sells electronics, had sales of €5.3 billion in Russia last year.
Called "Cesky Sen", or "The Czech Dream", which was also the name of the bogus hypermarket, the film is now showing in Prague.It is all the funnier because Messrs Remunda and Klusak are not driven by any obvious desire to humiliate the advertising industry or the shopping public, even if they end up doing both.
Today, Leclerc is France's leading hypermarket, with a market share of 17%, followed by Carrefour with 14%.
This portfolio, whose book value at historic cost was €1.27 billion, included plums such as 38 shopping centres (most with an Auchan hypermarket), shops in prime city-centre sites, and the valuable Rinascente building in the heart of Milan.Yet just months after the offer was completed, the market value of the 38 shopping centres (alone) was established at €861m, following competitive bidding.
In Carrefour at Montesson, a giant out-of-town hypermarket west of Paris, the bakery shelves are stacked with "Harry's American Sandwich" bread, a sliced product that has taken the land of the baguette by storm.
IN THANE, a suburb of Mumbai, shoppers can enjoy the wide aisles and well stocked shelves of the HyperCity hypermarket, which offers food imported from Waitrose (a British supermarket chain), a demonstration kitchen, a cricket net for testing out a new bat or pads, and 30 cash registers that ring from 11am to 10pm, seven days a week.
Carrefour focused on Bangkok's higher spenders and stuck to its hypermarket format.
For example, Exito, its Medellin-based hypermarket business, has recently merged with a local supermarketeer to become Colombia's largest retailer, and sold a 25% stake to France's Casino.
E.Leclerc, a hypermarket giant, was recently taken to court by pharmacists for running a television advertisement claiming that it could sell household medicines a lot cheaper if it were allowed to.
In America, Wal-Mart manages nearly 3,000 giant discount stores and hypermarket "supercentres".
For all the local opposition to their plans, they are determined to turn Central Europe's most populous country into a hypermarket heaven.
