Éxito, Colombia's flagship supermarket line, has a very distant echo of its founding pillars.
With the acquisition of 86.51% of Grupo Éxito from the French giant Casino, the Calleja Group of El Salvador achieves a dominant position in the department store chain founded in 1949 in Medellín.
And the changes in the organizational culture have already been felt from the Central American country, with guidelines as basic as the end decreed from San Salvador to remote work for all branches of the company.
Following the public takeover bid (OPA) held in the United States on January 20, Calleja reported that it managed to acquire 65.1% of the common shares, on the one hand, and acquired the remaining 21.41% on the stock market. of Colombian Securities.
Sources close to the operation assure that the transaction was beneficial for Salvadorans, since it was executed below the price considered fair by market analysts.
The financial situation of the Casino group was very tight and the sale of its South American assets, with a presence in Uruguay, Brazil and Argentina, was urgent to alleviate the storm.
Among the companies that are part of the Calleja Group is the Súper Selectos brand, the leading supermarket chain in the Central American country, as well as investments in real estate, technology and energy, among others.
Antioquian investor Juan Pablo Vieira explains: “The Calleja family has more than 60 years of experience and knowledge in the
retail
sector .
I consider it to be a very positive business.”
He says this to contrast the story with that of the Gilinski Group, the conglomerate of Cali bankers that offered in mid-2023 to take control of 96% of Éxito.
The clan, which had just taken over Nutresa, also from Antioquia, one of the great Latin food multinationals, did not seduce the French.
His proposals to buy almost the entire company for more than $836 million were slammed.
Vieira details: “The development of Grupo Calleja in El Salvador is quite similar to that of Éxito.
Since the late sixties they began to buy other local supermarket brands to unify them under the same company.”
Éxito's Colombian operation has not performed well in recent times.
For the fourth quarter of last year, a drop in sales of 12.6% was recorded, accompanied by a decline of 12.7% in gross profit.
Results that fit within the post-pandemic difficulties and the Bank of the Republic's increase in interest rates.
Since then, the financial burden on Colombian families has become more leaden, consumption has moderated and the country is growing at residual rates.
The Callejas, a family of Spanish immigrants living in Central America since the early 1950s, are one of the wealthiest groups in their country.
Daniel is the patriarch and his first store was a grocery store called Sumesa, in that same decade.
Today the visible head is Juan Carlos, 46-year-old grandson and designated heir, who faced President Nayib Bukele in the 2019 race for the presidency. Accompanied by former US President Bill Clinton and Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, he launched his unsuccessful candidacy for the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance Party (Arena).
The Salvadoran investigative newspaper
El Faro
titled an article in 2018:
Calleja, the young candidate of an old elite
.
The story connected the relationships of a handful of families, among them the Callejas, owners of sugar or airline companies, who had on several occasions financed the candidacies of Arena, founded in 1981 in order to fight against communism: “These surnames represent to the group of families of the Creole and European lineage that has remained at the top of the Salvadoran economy since the beginning of the Republic,” the article reads.
That is why the political rivalry with Bukele is a matter of nuances, and his re-election in February does not constitute disturbing news for the conglomerate.
Carlos Calleja retired from politics and in recent years has participated in business initiatives promoted by Bukele.
And despite the low growth rates, little foreign investment or the imbalance in the trade deficit, the country has managed to advertise itself through tourism and the numbers of large business groups seem stable.
Vieira states: “At the level of company valuation, the Bukele Government and its policies to reduce insecurity have been convenient for them.”
He also recalls that the Super Selectos stores now have 110 stores and 1,200 employees, and that they account for 60% of a market that has catapulted other regional brands such as Dollar City.
The business equations, however, leave out the increasingly frequent complaints of human rights violations generated by Bukele's security policies.
Since the purchase of Éxito in 2019 by the Casino Group, with the participation of its subsidiary the Brazilian Distribution Company, the Colombian representation in the shareholding has shrunk to the point of becoming symbolic.
The floating capital of Colombian origin, which measures the shares traded on the stock market, has fluctuated between 2% and 3% in recent years.
It is, therefore, a company whose management once again moves away from its native Antioquia.
This time bound for El Salvador of the controversial President Bukele.
And more than one analyst predicts that it will stop trading on the Colombian Stock Exchange, thus adding one more loss to the long list of issuers that have defected in recent years.
Subscribe here
to the EL PAÍS newsletter about Colombia and
here to the WhatsApp channel
, and receive all the key information on current events in the country.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
Keep reading
I am already a subscriber
_