St Petersburg grocery retailer Lenta has abandoned plans to sell itself by auction but a 35% stake is available and being negotiated with a number of competing buy-out funds, Chairman Stephen Ogden said in February. Speculation in Moscow is that the shareholder seeking an exit route is company founder Oleg Zherebtsov, whose stake is 35%. Other shareholders include August Meyer, who holds 36 percent, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, with 11 percent.

Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, has registered a Russian subsidiary under the name WM Eastern Europe Holdings and joined the Russian Association of Retail Trade Companies, or AKORT, which includes the 28 largest commercial organizations in the country. Magnit, the country’s second-largest food retailer, which mainly runs convenience food stores, is expanding across Russia to capitalize on rising incomes outside of the country’s largest cities. Same-store sales in the fourth quarter of 2008 climbed 19 percent in ruble terms.

Electronics retail chain Eldorado could be sold to Czech PPF Group which is giving the electronics chain a loan to settle overdue debts, PPF Group said in December. The deal would make Eldorado the first high-profile firm to be sold in the liquidity crisis. The Czech group said that Eldorado needs the money to settle overdue payments to its suppliers. ‘Among others, the conditions of additional financing assume a possibility of acquisition by the PPF Group of a substantial, up to majority, stake in the retailer,’ a PPF statement said.

X5 Retail Group, Russia’s largest food retailer, is buying Agrotorg-Rostov, a franchisee of the group’s Pyaterochka chain in the Rostov Region for an estimated at RUR400m ($13.1m). Agrotorg-Rostov 20 of the 35 Pyaterochka supermarkets it runs will be closed. X5 still expects sales to grow by more than 25 percent in 2009 after growth of 40 percent last year.