New Darty CEO starts week earlier

Not at
headquarters in Paris

Régis
Schultz, who gained a lot of experience at British Kingfisher and French But,
was to start as new CEO of Darty on 1 May, the British owner of electronics
chains Darty (France), Vanden Borre (Belgium) and BCC (the Netherlands), but
apparently he could not or would not wait any longer.

Right from the
start Schultz made a statement by shedding the past: he did not go to an
office at the headquarters in the centre of Paris, but at Bondy
(Seine-Saint-Denis), headquarters of Darty France. That is a bold statement,
as the French subsidiary is the problem child of the troubled
electronics group.

Carrefour
interested?

What was
supposed to be a quiet first day for the new CEO, turned out completely
different: the entire day rumours about a possible sale of Darty were buzzing
around. According to French newspaper Le Figaro, investment fund Knight Vinke
has asked business bank Goldman Sachs to be on the look for a possible buyer of
its shares. With 25% Knight Vinke is the largest shareholder of the British
electronics company.

The newspaper
even stated that CEO of Carrefour Plassat is thinking about a takeover. The
synergy between Carrefour en Darty could give the electronics departments of the
hypermarkets a new boost and it would let the company profit from Darty’s
expertise of the growing internet market.

The price
(Darty is worth about 300 million euro on the stock exchange) and the timing (a
takeover of that size would be difficult to swallow for shareholders of
Carrefour that is itself undergoing a restructuring) are said to have made Plassat bide his time.

Capital
loss of 82 million euro

Brand new
CEO Schultz said repeatedly that “Darty is always for sale, because the company
is listed on the exchange and does not have a controlling shareholder”. Still
many waited for Eric Knight of Knight Vinke to formally deny all rumours: “Knight Vinke denies it has given Goldman Sachs or anybody else a mandate concerning
its investment in Darty”.

According
to French business paper Les Echos Eric Knight and Régis Schultz met up two
weeks ago in Zurich. Knight is said to have pushed for some serious costs
savings: Schultz choosing to station at Darty France instead of in Paris can be
seen in that light.

Schultz
will have the difficult task to make his biggest shareholder happy again. When Knight
Vinke joined the British electronics group in 2010, the share of Kesa
Electricals was worth more than 100 pence: today that is barely half.

Today
Knight Vinke is looking at a capital loss of about 82 million euro and all this
despite restructurings made by the group under pressure of the shareholder. For
instance, the sale of British Comet for two symbolic pounds, the divestment of
Turkish, Italian and Spanish activities and the recent changes at the top of
the company.