Blue Capital, the company jointly owned by Colony Capital and Groupe Arnault, has increased its stake in French supermarket chain, Carrefour, to 12.9 percent.
The Los Angeles-based private equity real estate firm and the holding company of French billionaire Bernard Arnault previously held a 10.7 percent stake in the retailer. A statement from Blue Capital today said the firm would now hold 12.9 percent of Carrefour’s equity and 12 percent of the retailer’s voting rights.
In April, Blue Capital boosted its stake from 9.8 percent to 10.7 percent. At the time Carrefour executive chairman Jose Luis Duran told shareholders at his company’s annual meeting that he did not see any “major operational or strategic change within the group” following the stake increase.
Blue Capital, which first acquired a stake in Carrefour last March, is now the biggest individual shareholder, ahead of the Halley family. The Halley family previously had a 13 percent stake in Carrefour, but in March the family decided to split the stake into separate holding companies – Halley Participations SAS and Comet BV.
In May, Colony also increased its stake in Europe’s largest hotel owner, Accor, to 20 percent from nine percent. The increase came at the same time that Paris-based private equity firm Eurazeo increased its stake to 8.5 percent, with plans to increase the stake to 10 percent by the end of the year.
Accor is planning to expand its hotel platform from almost 500,000 rooms to up to 700,000 by 2010, with 22 percent focused in Asia, 41 percent in Europe and 20 percent in North and Latin America. It currently operates the luxury hotel chain Sofitel, the upscale Novotel and Pullman brands and the economy Ibis hotel group.
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