Carrefour opened its 1st store in Lebanon at the Beirut City Center Mall in Hazmieh on 04-Apr-2013, split on 2 floors of 4000sqm, the 1st level is only food and the 2nd level for non-food.

Today I had a quick visit to the newly opened Beirut City Center, nothing impressive, another copy/paste mall with known brand names all around.

Spinneys (a regional supermarket chain) is running a billboard campaign within its store premises about the come back of Tesco products to its shelves. Previously, when Spinneys re-opened its doors in Lebanon after the civil war, it had an assortment of Tesco products, most Lebanese consumers thought this is the private label of Spinneys and some others thought this is the introduction of Tesco stores under a different store brand.

I remember during my visits to Spinneys stores (mainly Dbayeh location), the Tesco products always looked miserable and mostly because of the long time they spent on the shelves and with very slow rotation and I never understood the added-value of having them.

It has been quite some time I did not visit any Spinneys store and the latest campaign means that the Tesco products disappeared for some time. While writing this blog post, I visited their Facebook page and this Tesco things had 29 Likes, 1 Share and 1 single Comment and still trying to understand the real value behind it.

And for those with some extra cash, Abraaj Capital is planning to sell its majority stake in the chain.

Cyprus, the beautiful Mediterranean island which is my all time favorite destination, for business and pleasure, is in deep trouble since 2 weeks. here is my opinion from a non-financial view and tryign to simplify it for the people who had no idea what is goign on in Cyprus.

Cyprus got stuck in this banks bailout with the Troika (European Central Bank (ECB), International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Eurozone partners) and a deadline to secure 7 billions out of the 17 billions they need which 10 billions will come from the EU.

The main problem started when Cyprus banks started buying Greek bonds because of the over extra cash they had on hand from the Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs and after the total failure of Greece these bonds became useless and had no real values anymore.

Now for those who think that the Russian will come helping Cyprus, this is another fictional theory which will never happen. Why will Russia come to save those who are trying to run away from paying taxes in the motherland and put all their fortunes in a tax-haven called Cyprus with super treatment and lots of advantages?

Cyprus has some opportunities in the newly discovered natural gas fields, but will the Russian win the bid of exploring it and the Europeans stay watching? This we have to wait and see as it needs some time to be cleared.

Did the Cypriots offer the Russian a deal over military bases in the Mediterranean in case something goes wrong in Tartouss, but what about the British bases on the island? Another theory.

I think the Orthodox Church of Cyprus can be the savior at one point in time, as a major stakeholder in Hellenic Bank, can the church come back to power as the old days of Archbishop Makarios?

If you need more news about the Cyprus financial crisis, please check the Cyprus Daily.

Cash only sign on Ledra Street in Nicosia on 24-03-2013

As Albert Einstein said: “Two Things Are Infinite: the Universe and Human Stupidity”, we can clearly see this theory applied every day somewhere in Lebanon.

It does not matter if the municipality is asking people not to stick any ads on the bridge pillar, someone very clever will come and stick an ad exactly under the warning. And it looks like previously someone had its ad directly on the warning itself but it was removed.

Spinneys, a chain of supermarket, got fresh painting lately in its Dbayeh branch, before the expected big opening of Carrefour’s first store in Lebanon (early April as announced).

In the meantime, Spinneys also launched a radio and billboard campaign declaring themselves the supermarket with the lowest prices in town and if you find any cheaper products, they will reimburse you 10x the difference.

Grocery retail market from Romania has fared quite dynamic in 2012, formats which include stores that were open throughout the year, was especially supermarkets and discount stores.

Format winner in 2012 was supermarket, small stores (convenience stores) has exploded. Thus, Mega Image retailer, present in Romanian retail market with two formats: Mega Image and Shop & Go, opened in 2012 the largest number of stores: 88, ending the year with a total of 193 stores.

Mega Image, the Romanian banner of Belgian company Group Delhaize, is retailer with the largest number of stores in Romania.

Another performers are Profi, who opened in 2012 no less than 45 stores, reaching 149 units at the end of the 2012 and Carrefour Market and Carrefour Express, the two supermarket banners of french retailer Carrefour, who opened in 2012 37 units in total.

On discounter sector Lidl, the German discounter opened 26 stores in 2012 and the other discount retailer, Penny Market has opened 14 units.

No major changes occurred on hypermarket sector, as expected, the total opening was only 12 hypermarket stores: 10 Kaufland stores and one in his right Auchan, Carrefour and Cora. Next year will counting the 20 real stores to Auchan, purchased late last year by the french retailer.

Cash & Carry format has stabilized somehow in 2012, at least in terms of number of stores. No store opening for the two representatives of this format: Metro and Selgros.

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