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David Bodamer
David Bodamer has been Editor-in-Chief since May 2006. Prior to that, he served as Managing Editor. Before joining Retail Traffic, Bodamer served as associate editor and senior associate editor for Commercial...more

Carrefour Sells the House

David Bodamer August 30th, 2007

The world’s biggest retailer after Wal-Mart is finally tapping the property market to bring up some cash for its shareholders. On Thursday France’s Carrefour announced it would sell a chunk of its enormous real estate portfolio through an initial public offering next year and would also sell other assets to fund a huge share buyback.

Shares in Carrefour were up 33 euro cents (45 cents), or 0.6%, at 52.47 euros ($71.42) in Thursday afternoon trading in Paris.

Carrefour said its real estate unit, Carrefour Property, made up of 280 hypermarkets and 540 supermarkets, was worth between 20 billion euros ($27.2 billion) and 24 billion euros ($32.6 billion). The company would keep hold of 80% of the unit but would sell the other 20% as shares for around 3 billion euros ($4.1 billion) between 2007 and 2008.

More at Forbes.