French retail group Auchan announced it will sell its Chinese subsidiary SunArt to China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba for $3.5 billion and withdraw from China.
The deal concerns a chain of 484 hypermarkets and 150,000 employees.
Auchan is one of the world’s largest retailers. And it’s the third major international supermarket chain that is set to leave the Chinese market. It follows the footsteps of French retailer Carrefour and Tesco from the UK.
