Billa brand to disappear from the Romanian market by end-2017

The Billa supermarket brand will disappear from the market by the end of next year, said Jean Baptiste Dernoncourt, director executive of the French group Carrefour in Romania, reports local Ziarul Financiar. The Billa stores will operate under the Carrefour brand. Carrefour took over the network of 86 Billa supermarkets at the end of last year in a deal estimated at almost EUR 100 million. This was the third-biggest transaction in the local retail market, after the purchase of 20 Real hypermarkets by French group Auchan and the takeover of the Plus Discount network by Lidl. Billa has 86 stores in Romania, a turnover of EUR 300 million and 3,000 employees. Carrefour, which has an annual turnover of over EUR 1 billion, previously took over the Artima supermarkets, which are now called Carrefour Market, and several smaller size Romanian entrepreneurial businesses. editor@romania-insider.com