Electronics group Darty to retreat from Spain in June

No guarantee for success

Darty (ex-Kesa) is expecting an operational
loss of 16 million euro for the current financial year, with sales not exceeding 120 million
euro. “To significantly improve our position, we would have to embark on a long
and potentially expensive development trajectory, without any guarantee for success
in a difficult market”, says chairman Alan Parker to French press
agency AFP.

A complete retreat, which will cost Darty about
thirty million euro, seemed the best solution. At the end of last year the group
announced it would focus mainly on France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Earlier
Darty pulled out of Italy and the UK, with an exit
from the Czech Republic and Slovakia to follow.

Now boss from 1 May

At 1 May Régis Schultz will take charge at the
electronics group. Schultz will come from But, the third biggest company on the
French interior market, where he was CEO and stopped a further drop of the
market share of the company. Before that he also worked at Kingfisher, as COO of B&Q.

Schultz has the heavy task to get downsized
Darty, which had a half-year loss of 3.9 million euro, back on the rails and to
take on Amazon and Cdiscount in the online market.