The Dutch in charge after Metro Group split

After Metro Group‘s split into Metro and Ceconomy, both branches will be led by a Dutch CEO. The aim of the split is to create two stronger branches.

Invest in services and stores

“This new company feels like a start-up with a 22 billion euro turnover. We feel we are going to do something new and are ready to do it on our own. We are Europe’s number one when it comes to consumer electronics, in a 300 billion euro market”, Ceconomy’s new CEO, Pieter Haas, told Dutch newspaper FD. He has big plans for the new consumer electronics company: he wants to boost additional services’ turnover, like insurances, from 6 to 10 %, and he also wants to invest in digitization. 

However, that does not mean he will ignore the store network: “We will continue to open new stores, but these no longer need to be 2,000 – 3,000 sqm stores. It could also be smaller stores in smaller cities, because the smaller store experiments were successful. We will also try shop-in-shops, like with Tesco in Hungary”, Haas said. He also did not exclude the possibility of acquiring other companies in order to keep growing.

More agile alone

Pieter Boone, Metro’s new CEO, also feels the split mainly has advantages: “We are no longer a single, large company, which was expensive and made everything move slower. We are much more agile on our own”, he said. Metro has been handled locally for several years now: local CEO’s have the option to alter the formula as they see fit. “They cannot touch the brand, but they are pretty much free to do what they want otherwise.” He also did not exclude the option of acquiring third parties.

The idea to split has been around for a while, but the company was unable to act on it as Media-Saturn’s debt was too large at the time. Now that that debt has become smaller, the time is right to carry out the split.