According to him, “Mere” occupies only 1 percent of the country’s market.
“It seems that an attempt is being made to protect the existing assets, stop operations, and most likely gain as much time as possible for regrouping, so that those assets could potentially be sold and thus withdraw from Lithuania,” Marius Dubnikovas told LRT radio on Friday.
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“Perhaps sell equipment and goods to some intermediate buyer, perhaps to competitors. There might be various options here,” the economist added.
According to him, employees might have been ordered to close the stores within 15 minutes to discontinue payment operations: “This is most likely a reaction to some parts of the sanctions package, to minimize transactions.”
According to M. Dubnikovas, “Mere” is not a significant network in the Lithuanian market: “One percent of the market (…), but in any system, one percent, whether it exists or not, probably doesn’t have much significance.”
According to the economist, the network’s annual turnover reaches about 70 million euros, while the Lithuanian retail food trade market amounts to slightly more than 7 billion euros.
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In turn, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Kristupas Vaitiekūnas stated that he believes the “Mere” case will be the largest in the new EU sanctions package.
The portal “15min” announced on Friday that all 20 stores of this network are being closed. A “Mere” representative confirmed to BNS that “due to technical obstacles, all stores are not operating,” but did not comment on whether the stores are temporarily closed or if it is related to the announced information about sanctions.
The revenues of “Valientė”, the company managing “Mere”, grew by 16.2 percent last year to 75.8 million euros, while net profit decreased by 14.2 percent to 1 million euros, according to its report submitted to the Centre of Registers.
The founders and co-owners of “Svetofor Group” own more than 2.2 thousand stores in Russia and other countries, operating under the brands “Svetofor”, “Mere” and “MyPrice”.
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