3 billion dollars and an exit passport.
"Three years after the signing of an alliance" and after having "jointly noted the specificity of the Chinese market, Auchan Retail accepted the proposal made by Alibaba to buy back all of its stake in SunArt (484 hypermarkets, 150,000 employees, leader in food market share in China) ”, explained the French group in a press release.
SunArt operates 484 stores across China, under the Auchan and RT-Mart brands.
The company was created in 2000 by Auchan with the Taiwanese Ruentex.
In November 2017, it sold to Alibaba, against $ 2.44 billion, almost all of its shares, the online sales group then becoming a shareholder of SunArt at par with Auchan.
Auchan hoped to establish a complementarity between traditional commerce in hypermarkets and Internet commerce.
In three years, 38 new stores have been opened.
In March, despite the confinement of Hubei province and many Chinese cities, SunArt accounted for 29% of Auchan Retail's turnover, thanks to online sales.
Before Auchan, Carrefour had packed up
But China, "an inspiring market, remains nonetheless very specific" and "Alibaba appeared to us as the most able to make SunArt grow," said Edgard Bonte, president of Auchan Retail, quoted in the press release.
In June 2019, this reason also prompted the Carrefour group to leave China.
The company now wants to "accelerate the deployment of its Auchan 2022 business plan on its current locations".
In spring 2019, the group announced the first part of its “recovery” plan with the sale of 21 sites potentially involving between 700 and 800 employees.
Then in January he launched a voluntary departure plan, which spared the stores, with the elimination of more than 500 jobs.
And in early September, the group presented the second stage of the plan, that is to say 1,500 new job cuts, sparing the cashiers.
