Vivarte finishes the sale of Merkal, its Spanish footwear chain

The ill-fated French retail group would be finalising the sale of its affordable footwear chain in Spain, Merkal. In fact, the French company hopes to close the sale "in about ten days".

This weekend, a spokesman for the French multi-brand group Vivarte told AFP that "the sale of Merkal will be announced in the next few days."

It should be recalled that Vivarte took out the Catalan footwear company almost a year ago, in November 2016. At that time, market sources valued the affordable footwear chain between 50 million and 70 million euros. The Merkal brand has been "for sale for more than a year" and "have difficulties" to be transferred to someone else, said the member of the workers' union of the Vivarte group Karim Cheboub.

Vivarte to sell its last Spanish asset, Merkal, after one year searching for the perfect tender

Merkal is the only asset of the French group in Spain, after last year it merged the footwear firm Fosco (focused on the mid-high segment) and integrated its profitable stores within Merkal's network of points of sale.

Sources of the company consulted by the French newspaper 'Les Echos' confirm that the sale of Merkal is a matter of a few days and suggest that the buyer will be a European venture capital fund, although they do not talk about prices.

In total, according to the latest data available in the Spanish Mercantile Registry, the Catalan footwear firm completed the 2014 fiscal year (closed on 31 August 2015) with a total of 226 establishments.

The sale of Merkal is part of the financial consolidation process in which the Vivarte group embarked a few years ago and follows the transfer of the Pataugas brand to the Hopps Group in May and Kookai to an Australian group last July. This is the second debt restructuring for the group since in 2014 Vivarte will be controlled by several private equity firms such as Oaktree, Alcentra, Babson and Golden Tree.

Image: Fosco Collection, Merkal Web, Spin