The hardware store chain has stopped all activities in Russia.
(Photo: imago/fotoimedia)
Dusseldorf The DIY chain Obi is taking the decisive steps towards the announced withdrawal from the Russian market. As the company confirms to the Handelsblatt, it is giving away its markets, including all furnishings, to an investor in order to speed up the withdrawal.
“All markets were already closed on March 17, 2022, and yesterday all legal entities were transferred to an investor without payment of the purchase price,” the company said when asked. This is subject to the approval of the responsible authorities and under the condition that the Obi brand will no longer be used in Russia in the future. “This means that the Obi Group is neither directly nor indirectly active in Russia after the transaction,” the company said.
The company is thus forestalling a possible expropriation by the Russian authorities. Christian Haub, head of the Obi owner Tengelmann, said in an interview with “Manager Magazin” that he expected expropriation. To justify the withdrawal, the owner of the family business said: “For moral reasons, I simply could not imagine continuing to do business in Russia and thus indirectly supporting the regime there financially.”
Obi DIY stores: Investor no longer wants to use the Obi brand in Russia
According to reports, the Russian management of the Obi national company tried to reopen the stores after the stores were closed. Obi is said to have prevented this by separating the tills from the servers and thus preventing the use of the software. Because of such experiences, it should be important for Obi to transfer the markets to an investor who promises not to continue using the brand in Russia.
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Obi is the German market leader in the DIY sector and has total sales in Europe of 8.7 billion euros. The company recently did almost five percent of this in Russia. Before the closure, Obi operated 27 hardware stores in the country. In total, Obi has 640 stores in ten European countries.
Russia has long been an important growth market for Obi. As recently as December, the company had tested fast delivery of goods from the Moscow branch in a pilot project. Obi had worked with Sbermarket – a subsidiary of Sberbank, which is now on the sanctions list.
More: For companies like Henkel, Ritter Sport and Ehrmann, business in Russia is becoming a reputational risk