Wallyworld cuts and runs from Germany, post haste!

[MrScorpio]

Wal-Mart Decides to Pull Out of Germany

By MARK LANDLER
Published: July 28, 2006

FRANKFURT, July 28 — Wal-Mart Stores, admitting defeat in Germany’s giant, cutthroat retail market, said today that it would sell its 85 stores here to a German retailer, the Metro Group, and incur a loss of $1 billion.

The decision to sell out came two months after Wal-Mart sold its stores in South Korea, and amounts to a rare retreat by the world’s largest retailer from its breakneck global expansion.

In Germany, analysts say, Wal-Mart never got traction in a market that is characterized by unrelenting price competition, well-established discounters, and the cultural resistance of German shoppers to hypermarkets, which sell fresh vegetables a few aisles away from lawn mowers.

“They walked into a triple-witching hour in Germany,” said James Bacos, the director of the retail and consumer goods practice at Mercer Management Consulting in Munich. “They got into Germany at a time when the whole market was shifting away from their model.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/28/business/28cnd-shop.html?_r=2&hp&ex=1154145600&en=85a2f0259b2ab160&ei=5094&partner=homepage&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

[DainBramaged]

1. Wal-farts, paying the employees even less to make up losses

[malta blue]

2. Take that Sprawlmart....

:bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce:

[CanuckAmok]

3. I wonder if the German buyer will take over Wal*Mart in Poland...

...

[Kellanved]

4. Beisheim? He'd love to

Old SS, the guy. But there's no Wal-Mart in Poland yet, so he has to wait.

[CanuckAmok]

5. Really? Old SS?

Shouldn't he be in jail, or something?

Or was he an "only following orders" kinda guy?

[MrScorpio]

6. Only if he committed war crimes

Which I'm not sure of, with this guy

[Kellanved]

7. Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler

So not your average, harmless murderer.

Recently he tried to get an high school named after him. Offered several millions.

The school denied, because his biography was considered unfit by the school board.