Case Report for Carrefour, S.a

754 Words4 Pages
Dilemma: Which policy decision that Carrefour would take in consideration of the speed and direction of the future corporate growth? Alternatives: 1. Expand wholly owned business 2. Increase the percentage of jointed venture stores 3. Increase the percentage of franchise stores Criteria: 1. Funding strategy 2. Profitability, measured by Working Capital 3. Investment, measured by Net Fixed Assets 4. Solvency Analysis: In the Carrefour case, we would not use liquidity ratio and liquid ratio as criteria since the working capital requirement was negative and long-term liability was zero. Therefore, our analysis in the following part is based on the funding strategy. From the funding strategy graph, we could find that the difference between long-term financing and long-term investment became larger and larger. That means the liquidity of Carrefour is quite well but there are some problems in its solvency. Carrefour is now facing high risk. We decide to analyze long-term investment and solvency. Considering that long-term investment consist of working capital requirement and net fixed assets, we have following analysis. 1. Profitability measured by Working Capital: The French government had created some regulations of the hypermarket in order to contain its huge expansion. On one hand, the harsh living condition of small retailers urged the government to impose a tax on retail merchants, which means hypermarkets would bear a higher percentage of tax. On the other hand, the competition for construction permits in France became more difficult as many firms and individuals vied for authorization to build in attractive location. These regulations lead Carrefour to invest in joint ventures and set up franchises instead of wholly owned stores. Under franchising, Carrefour only received a fee of 0.2% of total store sales, which is the least profitable
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