People buy cell phones in a Grupo Éxito store, March 2022. Sebastian Barros (Getty Images)
Grupo Éxito announced this week that it is changing ownership. El Salvador’s Calleja Group has agreed with French conglomerate Casino, previously majority partner of the Antioquia-based chain, to acquire 100% of its shares in order to take control of the largest supermarkets in Colombia. In the absence of approvals from Superfinanciera and the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as local Colombian and American regulators, the transaction initiated by Calleja will be carried out in both countries through a public tender offer (OPA) for a maximum amount of 1,175 million dollars.
Apparently all actors benefit from the agreement. Casino, which is experiencing severe financial storms and plans to divest at least half of its subsidiaries in South America, will receive some liquidity to cover the debt that leaves the company on the brink of ruin. Calleja, the first retail group in El Salvador, expands its operations and takes a leading position in a strategic business in Colombia with branches also in Brazil and Uruguay.
The transaction envisages the acquisition of at least 51% of the planned shares, voting rights and 13.3% of the shares held by the Brazilian casino subsidiary Pao de Açucar (GPA) in Éxito. The offer from Calleja, which has a history of more than six decades and is the owner of the popular Súper Selectos chain in its country, is $0.9053 per share. This means that Casino’s direct participation would be around $400 million, while GPAs would reach around 156 million. The preliminary agreement stipulates that Salvadorans pay in cash.
“The price offered per share will be reduced by any extraordinary dividend distribution or any other distribution, payment or transfer of assets (…),” said a statement from the French consortium on Monday, October 16, in Paris. Following the news, Grupo Éxito’s share price rose 33% on the Colombian Stock Exchange on Tuesday. A sign that can be interpreted as the impetus for the takeover of one of Antioquia’s flagship companies by a Central American company with 110 warehouses.
The company bears the surname of its founder, Daniel Calleja, a Spanish immigrant who entered the market business in the 1950s with a store called Sumesa. A parallel story to that of Éxito, which was founded in 1949 in a warehouse in the center of Medellín with the aim of selling leftovers and textiles. Years later, the business expanded and added products to emulate the experience of the Carulla supermarkets in the capital, founded by a Catalan merchant with the same surname. El Éxito, which was taken over by the Bogotá chain years later, employs 40,000 people in Colombia alone.
Salvadoran Juan Carlos Calleja Hakker, grandson of Patriarch Daniel and former presidential candidate of El Salvador, is now leading the operation. The 47-year-old tycoon specialized in business administration at a New York university and won the race to stay at veteran Californian banker Jaime Gilinski’s Grupo Éxito at a young age. The astute Colombian businessman, owner of one of the country’s five largest assets, had made two offers in the middle of the year to take over 96% of the Brazilian GPA shares in Grupo Éxito.
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The 66-year-old tycoon’s first bet came at the end of June and was for $836 million ($0.67 per share). The second attack occurred two weeks later, in early July. It was a bet on a lower GPA acquisition target at a 20% higher price: $0.89 per share.
Both offers were rejected. Since then, there have been no new statements from a family clan that has been under media scrutiny in recent months in the name of its crusade to buy the multi-Latin American food conglomerate Nutresa, in a long and difficult battle with the so-called Antioqueño Business Group.
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