BULGARIAN NEWS

The Competition Protection Commission allowed the merger of the Piccadilly and Carrefour retail chains, the anti-monopoly watchdog said on its website.According to the statement, the company European Retail Investment, based in Luxembourg and the based in the Netherlands CM Balkans are allowed to take over the control of AP Mart – the company that in the summer of 2014 bought...

The Austrian ambassador to Bulgaria Roland Hauser unveiled a new eco store of the Billa supermarket chain in Sofia's Lozenets residential district. With this, the chain made another step towards increasing its energy efficiency as a part of its long-term strategy for protection of environment.The store has a total area of 1833 sq/m, of which 900 sq/m are retail space. It uses...

The law on a single centralized tobacco distribution company, which was approved by the Parliament, carries substantial economic risks, tobacco companies said in a joint statement. The statement was sent to Hungarian news agency MTI by BAT Pécsi Dohánygyár, Imperial Tobacco Magyarország, JTI Hungary and Philip Morris Magyarország. It opposed...

Tesco has opened its European Innovation Centre in Kraków, the company said on Thursday. Products created at the site will be marketed not only in Poland, but also in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary. “In the Innovation Centre, we will go through the whole process of developing new products – from their specification and ingredients, through...

Danone said it will keep its medical-nutrition division, cooling months of speculation about a possible sale. The maker of Activia yogurt made the decision after a board review of prospects, the Paris-based company said. The statement provides some clarity over the future of the unit after months of reports about a possible divestment. A sale may have fetched as much as...

Metro AG, Germany’s biggest retailer, reported lower quarterly profit after a year of divestments and said its Christmas sales season will be “satisfactory” after a slow start. Earnings before interest and taxes fell 4.3 percent to 418 million euros ($520 million) in the three months ended Sept. 30, Dusseldorf-based Metro said in a statement. Sales were 15.1...

Unilever, Procter & Gamble and Gillette are among those facing penalties for colluding on price rises between 2003 and 2006. Some of the world’s biggest consumer products companies, including Unilever, Reckitt Benckiser, Procter & Gamble and Gillette, have been fined a combined €951m (£748m) by the French competition watchdog...