Bundeskartellamt clears acquisition and further operation of 58 “Real” stores – purchasing agreement to be reviewed separately

The Bundeskartellamt has today cleared under merger control the acquisition of 58 more “Real” stores by real Beteiligungs- und Service GmbH, Frankfurt am Main, from SCP Retail Operations S.á.r.l., Luxembourg. The stores are to be acquired as a management buyout involving the financial investor Dr Tischendorf. The stores will then be jointly operated by a team of “Real” managers and the family business Tischendorf under the “Real” brand. Altogether approx. 5,000 staff are employed in the 58 stores.

Andreas Mundt, President of the Bundeskartellamt: “It is good news that the existence of 58 more “Real” stores has been secured. The stores are to be continued under the ”Real” name with the involvement of the previous management. This offers the employees a perspective and also entails opportunities for competition. The “Real” brand is preserved and could continue to set certain impulses for food distribution in large surface stores. Local consumers will benefit from the further operation of the stores as they will still have a choice of retailers.”

The clearance only applies to the merger control side of the acquisition. Possible agreements which the company might make regarding its future purchasing activities have not yet been examined under competition law.

The investor SCP, which is controlled by the Russian investment company Sistema, had acquired all of the 276 former ”Real” stores from Metro and sold them in the last two years predominantly to Kaufland, Edeka and Globus. In examining the acquisition of “Real” stores by Edeka und Kaufland, the Bundeskartellamt conducted extensive investigations of the sales and procurement side. Some of the stores could not be acquired due to competition concerns on certain regional sales markets. On the procurement side, i.e. the relationship between food retailers and their suppliers, the Bundeskartellamt made the acquisition of stores by Edeka and Kaufland conditional on the further sale of stores with a purchase volume of at least 200 million euros to medium-sized retailers. The acquisition of stores by Globus was unproblematic from a competition perspective. (see press releases of 22 December 2020 and 17 March 2021).

Further acquisitions of ”Real” stores by Kaufland and Edeka in the last twelve months could be cleared within the one-month deadline of the first phase of merger control after the companies had already limited their acquisitions from the onset to stores which were unproblematic from a competition perspective.