Germany's Metro Group and Britain's Tesco bolstered their Polish operations today, buying stores from French rival Casino, which is quitting the highly competitive market to help cut its debt.
Casino said the sale of its Geant hypermarket stores to Metro's Real supermarket unit and associated property assets, and its Leader Price convenience stores to Tesco would help it cut net debt by €925 million.
"This transaction will have an immediate accretive impact on the net income," Casino said in a statement.
Casino said once the sales, which are subject to antitrust approval, had been completed it would have achieved €1.5 billion of a planned €2 billion debt reduction target.
Metro said it would pay €224 million for 19 existing Geant stores and another seven under construction or planned.
The Geant stores had sales of €529 million in 2005.
Metro said the deal would boost the number of Real stores in Poland to 49 with a combined turnover of around €1.3 billion.
"This takeover will strengthen the international position of Real as a whole," Metro CEO Hans-Joachim Koerber said in a statement.
Casino said it was selling the underlying Geant store real estate to GE Real Estate for €555 million.
Tesco said its acquisition of the Leader Price supermarkets was worth €105 million and would boost its turnover in Poland - where it has been active for 10 years - by around €242 million.