Polish Enterprise Fund V (PEF) has bought retailer Artima, a business developed by businessman Florentin Banu and investment fund SEAF Trans-Balkan Romania Fund, for 21 million euros after four months of negotiations.
Polish Enterprise Fund offered 17 million euros for the shares and 4 million euros to settle debt with banks.
"The price offered justified the exit at this time considering the retail market has grown up, and it takes much higher financial resources to develop such a store chain. There have been other buyout offers from strategic partners, yet they were turned down," says Mircea Jalba, general manager of SEAF Trans-Balkan (TBRF), a venture capital fund that bought into the Artima business in 2002, making its investments of 1.55 million euros in two stages, in September 2002 and March 2003.
Businessman Florentin Banu has this way completed his second exit from a business he built from scratch, after having sold his shares in Joe IBC wafer maker to Nestle in late 2000. The value of that deal was never publicly revealed.
It was actually the money from the sale of Joe that allowed Banu to open his own supermarket chain, Artima, in 2001. The target was building supermarkets in the medium-sized cities in Transilvania.
SEAF TBRF and Florentin Banu were joined by the other shareholders in the sale.
SEAF TBRF, which negotiated with PEF on behalf of all Artima shareholders, owned 19.0288% of the business. The other shareholders of Artima at the time of the sale were Florentin Banu, 27.22%, financial institutions like DEG (Deutsche Investitions-und Entwicklungsgesellschaft GmbH), 26.91%, Daniel Banu (Florentin Banu's brother), 2.48%, SEAF Central and Eastern Growth Fund (17.19%), Sandra Adametz, 6.81% and Vlad Ardelean (Artima's chief financial officer), 0.36%.
"I believe the successful strategy developed by Artima is what attracted the buyer in the first place and I believe it will continue this strategy," Jalba says.
Florentin Banu could not be reached, as neither could the managers of the Polish investment fund.
PEF V's becoming shareholder of Artima is supposed to help prepare the store chain for integration in specialised chains, as analysts of the retail market say.
At present, the 14 Artima supermarkets located in the West of the country do not have a homogenous structure, with commercial areas ranging from 600-800 sqm to nearly 2,000 sqm.
Under the circumstances, the large surface area stores could be taken over by supermarket chains, while smaller stores could be eyed by some of the discounter chains that have announced plans to enter Romania soon.
Artima concluded 2004 with more than 31 million euros in turnover and EBITDA of 2.3 million euros.
According to the company founder Florentin Banu, the 2004 turnover target had been set at 28 million euros. Back in 2003, the turnover was of approximately 16.4 million euros, according to the data on the Finance Ministry's website.
stelian.negrea@zf.ro ; ionut.bonoiu@zf.ro
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