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Article: Gazumped! Sir Geoff Mulcahy thought he had ASDA in his pocket. then Wal -Mart picked it. So can the man from Kingfisher bounce back?
- Article from:
- The Independent (London, England)
- Article date:
- June 23, 1999
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 1999 The Independent - London. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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SIR GEOFF MULCAHY is taking it on the chin. "I don't feel boxed
in," insists the chief executive of Kingfisher, the Woolworth to
Comet worldwide retail group. The great survivor of the UK retail
scene has been coming to terms with Wal-Mart's deft gazumping of his
agreed pounds 17bn merger with the Asda supermarket chain. "If I
look back over the years we have had our ups and downs," rues Sir
Geoff. "When I go back to the early days, with a loss-making
Woolworths and a tiny B&Q, you could have got quite depressed about
it. But we've done quite a lot since then." Losing Asda to the
mighty US discount retailer is not the first setback to hit him.
On Monday last week Sir Geoff was driving from ...