Wal-Mart (WMT) Heads Back To China
With its US results still in trouble, Wal-Mart (WMT) is turning its attention back to one of its most promising markets–China. According to a report in the Telegraph, the world’s largest retailer is considering spending $1 billion to buy Beijing…
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With its US results still in trouble, Wal-Mart (WMT) is turning its attention back to one of its most promising markets–China. According to a report in the Telegraph, the world’s largest retailer is considering spending $1 billion to buy Beijing Hualian which owns big box stores in the country.
Wal-Mart has already bought a piece of China’s Trust-Mart, and has a number of its own stores in the country.
The US company is gambling that it can get further into a tremendous growth market without being man-handled by the Chinese government. It has already put branchs of the Chinese communist party into the chain and has challenged some of the company’s pay practices. The more Wal-Mart pushes into that market, the greater the risk.
Wal-Mart China had 83 of its own stores up at the end of the last quarter, up from 57 in the same quarter a year ago. In its 10-Q, the company singled out the UK, Brazil, Mexico, and China as its big growth markets.
So, it appears Wal-Mart wants to wade deeper into the world’s most populated country.
But, be careful what you wish for because you might get it.
Douglas A. McIntyre
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Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.
