Business NEWS

Lotte Shopping Wins Bidding to Acquire china Times, Beating Wumart

By Steve Gavriliuc for CEOWORLD Magazine Updated:October 19, 2009

South Korean retailer Lotte Shopping Co.(023530.KS) has agreed to pay as much as $630m to acquire Times Ltd. (1832.HK), a Chinese supermarket chain. The deal will allow Lotte to quickly increase its presence in mainland China.

Lotte had agreed to buy 72.3 percent of the Chinese retailer from the retailer’s owner for as much as $650 million.

“Now that we have acquired its management rights from the top shareholder, we are aiming to buy from minority shareholders to secure 100 percent of the company,” a Lotte Shopping spokesman said.

The two companies are likely to ink the deal early next week at the earliest, sources familiar with the issue said. “We are currently in the final stage of talks, with a positive stance, but we have no information on the size or the value of the stake,” Lotte spokesman Lee Sun-dae was quoted as saying by Bloomberg.

Another Lotte official, who declined to be named, said purchasing local franchises is one of its prioritized options when it advances into overseas markets to secure a stable base of customers and minimize possible risks. The takeover is said to be “quite a plausible deal” in that regard.

Lotte Shopping is currently running 10 stores in China, including a department store in Beijing. Last year, it took over eight Chinese stores of CTA Makro, a Chinese-Dutch joint venture.

It opened its first overseas department store in Moscow in 2007 before adding its Beijing outlet. Earlier this month, Lotte Shopping announced in a regulatory filing that it plans to invest 732.7 billion won ($625.7 million) in its Hong Kong unit to finance its businesses in Hong Kong and mainland China.

Lotte Shopping, the biggest department store operator in South Korea, confirmed Monday morning that it had agreed to buy a controlling stake in Hong Kong-listed Times Ltd.

Sphere: Related Content

Like this article! ‹ Malaysia lender RHB Capital to Buy Indonesian Lender PT Bank Mestika Sarah Palin looking for a job, business deals and reference on LinkedIn? ›
Share this Post: Get It Delivered To Your Inbox

Readers Rating:

(No Ratings Yet)

Loading ...

Popularity:
1794 views

Comments:
Comments

Leave a Comment:

Tagged with: Chinese, Chinese retailer, Lotte Shopping, retailer, South Korean, supermarket, supermarket chain, Times Ltd, Wumart Stores

Janice

Lotte is really doing all the best it can do to win in the bid, well I hope even they would win the bid the esthetician supplies will retain like the one they did for some of their stores.