Supermarkets in Brazil

A French food fight

Two French firms are fighting for dominance of the Brazilian retail market

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Readers' comments



Appears that the socialist government of Brasil is helping one of their supporters to get a bigger share of the food business. Why any government needs to get involved in food distribution/retailing is truly mind boggling! Hell, Wal Mart is there and many places around the world without any government help. It is stupid for any government to get involved in such a business just to help one of their wealthy supporters. Total waste of taxpayers money.


1st: Carrefour has nothing new to add to Brazilian market, as the article suggests in its end. It has been here for a long time, it has been beaten by Extra (CBD) in its fight for the first place in the big supermarket chains;

2nd: It is not the two French chains that are fighting for dominance in Brazil, but Abilio Diniz, CBD's founder and owner who is probably coming out as main controller of one or both those groups;

As for some comment on the independence from government help of USA's firms, the fact is they are the government. They run the country and their interests rule from the FDA to the Senate.

ahmed limam

Agree with JMp8SywFaY that Pão de Açucar is certainly not "fancy" as The Economist claims. Where does the Economist writer gets his info from? The Zona Sul supermarket chain is indeed upmarket, but Pão de Açucar is definitely on the cheaper side.


People have to eat, but that does not mean selling food is easy.

One of the keys to the long-term sustainable growth of any of these firms will be dependent on their ability to establish a reliable vendor support network, very difficult to do in a fragmented market, where infrastructure and expertise is limited and expensive.


The argument of giving up some shops in São Paulo to local or smaller chains, in order to get Cades approval, is ridiculous. With the real state prices, logistic problems and bargain capability in Brazil, its just impossible for smaller chains to replace CDB or Carrefour shops already, imagine if they merge? No other chain will be able to compete with this new brand, they will be free to practice extreme prices, unless you want to travel to a far away place to buy your food. If CDB totally failed to low their banana pricing here, where they are produced, sold at the cheapest price to CDB, when they raise the prices to the point a banana costs more in Brazil then in France, how come they are saying they will win the French market? The BNDES is being criminal again, giving Brazilian money to another multibillionaire, instead of helping in dangerous sectors. But thats no news, they do that all the time, and our criminal judges play blind, guess why? Thats all we needed, now the government wants to be multibillionaires business partner to control what we eat. And will use our money for that.


These two companies have 28% of total sales of supermarkets in Brasil and HALF of total sales in Sao Paulo, the biggest city. How The Economist can be a favor of an oligopoly like this, especially with support oh BNDES, an public bank with asset provided by the tax-payers? It´s a shame!!

Another thing that this article seems to forget is that Abilio Diniz, Pao de Açucar´s owner, alwalys supported the Worker´s Party and the election of Dilma Roussef. Rent-seeking, you know?

Mr Ripley

Following on.. this can be illustrated in the fact that online retailers are still doing very poorly vs the high street in Brazil. This is primarily due to poor infrastructure... poor logistics. How many reasonable size deliveries could a company reasonably make in a day? not many.

Mr Ripley

JMp8SywFaY Tesco would struggle in Brazil to do what it has done in other markets. Supermarket chains are basically big logistics companies.. with a lack of investment in infrastructure in Brazil it is not likely Brazilians will experience a desirable level of competition for some time!


Pao de Azucar isn't "fancy": it's actually rather down-market.

But Brazilian retailing, especially groceries, could really do with an injection of foreign expertise, especially in areas like stock control. (There are frequent shortages.) TESCO, where are you?


Why has BNDES to be part of this business? Why does the Brazilian tax-payer has to pay for Abilio Diniz's (a vehement Lulista) pipe-dreams? The government should invest in making the more competitive business thrive, not squander tax payer money on building huge companies that will dominate the market and diminish competition.


I appreciate the concerns of the government about the small amount of big Brazilian corps able to operate in international markets and assuage a certain stability for the economy of the country and their attempts to stimulate the creation of some more...BUT and it is a big but, only if there is a 100 pc guarantee that, internally, the prices practised by the new company to the customers be comparable to it's rivals AND they don't squash grocery producers and other Brazilian suppliers of food. Pao de Acucar, as far as I know, doesn't have a good reputation when it comes to practising low prices to their customers while profiting massively from paying peanuts to their suppliers. We wan't a win/win deal, not another shark to bite our legs.



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