The German retail company Metro has announced plans to separate its wholesale and food business from the consumer electronics retail chain, which will henceforth be the mainstay of the group.
The consumer electronics retail chain Media Saturn will retain a 10 percent stake in the new division that will encompass wholesale and food operations to strengthen its capital base, according to a statement from Metro released on Monday.
The company’s supervisory board approved the business separation plan at a meeting held yesterday, it adds.
The German company confirmed that the business separation will be completed by mid-next year, adding that the group will be divided into two organizationally separate parts on a pro-forma basis as of September 30 of this year.
The wholesale and food division will take on nearly all existing financial obligations of the group, they state, noting that they expect both newly formed parts of the business to secure an investment rating without recapitalization.
Metro has been reorganizing its business for several years and selling off divisions that do not fall within its core activities, such as the department store chain Kaufhof. They then focused on the wholesale division Metro cash & carry and the consumer electronics retail chain Media Saturn.
They have now decided to also separate the wholesale division and the struggling hypermarket chain Real, which together generate revenues of around 38 billion euros, and retain the consumer electronics retail chain as the mainstay of the core group.
It is proposed that the group’s CFO Mark Frese take on that role in the consumer electronics division while the current CFO of the wholesale division would perform that function in the division that will encompass wholesale and food operations.
