Carrefour Adds to its European Mall Holdings

Carrefour SA (Boulogne Billancourt, France) has joined a group of institutional investors to buy 127 European shopping malls for about $2.75 billion.

Bloomberg News reports that the purchase from Klepierre SA (Paris) is largely intended to give the European hypermarket giant more control of the sites surrounding its stores.

With the transaction, it adds malls spanning about 5.1 million square feet in France, Spain and Italy. Interestingly, between 2000 and 2002 Carrefour sold to Klepierre most of the properties it is now acquiring.

Bloomberg says Carrefour will have a 42 percent stake in the new company. The other partners were not reported.