For a businessman who collected several tens of million of euros from selling his business two years ago, Lorand Szarvadi is a busy person. The decline of the electronics and home appliances market is keeping Domo’s entire management team (that Szarvadi is still a part of) on their toes. For them, the crisis has also brought an opportunity: last month, the company took over the Electro World store chain in Hungary, in a transaction for which ”it was said we had paid one euro, but the overall investment was of a few million euros,” said Lorand Szarvadi, without providing an exact figure.

However, he did specify that it was ”a rather complicated transaction, entailing the renegotiation of rents for stores, compensatory payments and guarantees in escrow accounts.” The nine stores on the Hungarian market, with an average sales area of 5,000 square metres, have so far been operated by British retailer Dixons, which took the strategic decision of withdrawing from markets in the region. ”Hungary is the first market that Dixons is withdrawing from, but Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia will be next,” said the head of Domo. The stores taken over by the Romanian retailer will also include a shop-in-shop, with the areas dedicated to electronics and home appliance stores to also include toy stores.

The transaction whereby the Domo network took over stores abroad is novel in that it is international companies which, as a rule, swallow businesses developed on the Romanian market. An example is the takeover of the Artima supermarket network by Polish investment fund Enterprise Investors, and later by French retailer Carrefour. In the production sector, things are even more clear-cut, with almost all sectors being dominated by foreigners who took over Romanian companies or started businesses from scratch. Romanian-based companies that have expanded abroad via acquisitions can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Controlled by Cezar Rapotan, Arabesque, which deals in the distribution of construction and finishing materials, has bought competitors in Ukraine and Moldova. Jolidon, held by Gabriel Carlig, has found its way to markets located farther away (Italy and France), where it took over rival companies on the lingerie market.