It’s a quiet morning in the papers for UK grocery news, but there are a few international stories.
Metro CEO Olaf Koch urged shareholders to back the German retail conglomerate’s plan to split itself in two, as he opened the group’s annual investor meeting in Düsseldorf on Monday, The Financial Timesreports. Metro plans to spin off its food businesses into a new company, which will keep the name Metro. Its consumer electronics business will be renamed Ceconomy. A separate updated article reported that shareholders voted overwhelmingly in favour of the German retail conglomerate’s plans to split in two.
Japanese flavourings group Ajinomoto has narrowed its search to the UK, Germany and France as it targets Europe with $1.3bn acquisitions pot, The Financial Times reports. It is the third stage of its $2bn global acquisition campaign. The paper’s Lex column says the buy-and-build strategy has done little for the top line, which has gone nowhere over the past five years as it sold-off non-core operations. “Acquisitions are an additive that can induce headaches, like food overseasoned with MSG. But judicious M&A by Ajinomoto should mean the market would back the group if it does add European flavours to its portfolio as planned.”
The Mail has a profile of Boots boss Stefano Pessina. The paper writes that despite being at the helm of Walgreens Boots Alliance, the multi-billion-pound global pharmacy empire he built, Pessina doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘stress’. “I am always calm,” he says. “I don’t know what stress is.”
The Financial Times writes that shares in Tyson Foods were in retreat on Monday after the US’s largest meat processor said it received an inquiry last month from US securities regulators, which it said is likely connected to a civil litigation accusing it and other companies of conspiring to fix broiler chicken prices. The Lex column adds: “Tyson is thinking about the future of food. But investors remain preoccupied with the company’s past.”
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