Auchan-owned Ceetrus company may sell assets in the Russian Federation – Kommersant

The Ceetrus group intends to sell all its Russian assets, sources said “Vedomosti”. One of the newspaper’s interlocutors claims that the government commission has already approved the decision. The buyer can be the logistics operator Leadertrans from Tatarstan. Experts estimated the amount of the possible transaction at 20–21.6 billion rubles.

Ceetrus is part of the French Auchan group and owns the Aquarel shopping complexes in the Russian Federation in Pushkino, Volgograd, Togliatti near Moscow, as well as the Troika complex in Moscow. The group owns checkout areas in Auchan hypermarkets. The total portfolio is about 180 thousand sq. m. m (the website says about 150 thousand sq. m).

One of Ceetrus’s partners told Vedomosti that the issue of sale had been raised over the past years, but it had not reached serious negotiations with potential buyers. The seller assumes that the transaction will reduce the risks of owning assets in the Russian Federation.

Two sources of Vedomosti claim that Leadertrans intends to buy out all assets; the other two sources said that the company was not interested in checkout areas in Auchan hypermarkets. A representative of Ceetrus in Russia declined to comment; requests to the head office and Leadertrans remained unanswered.

Leonid Uvarchev