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Wal-Mart’s biggest global competitor is the big French retailer Carrefour, a firm that has hypermarkets, big stores offering avariety of goods. It has made huge investments around the globe inLatin America and China. But not all is well as competitors aretaking market share in its home market. There has been evenspeculation of a take over by Wal-Mart or Tesco, an English chain.Mr. Barnard has been ousted after heading the company for 12years and was replaced by Jose Louis Durant who is of German-Spanish descent. Although the global expansion is cited by someas success, it may even be a big mistake. It withdrew from Japanand sold 29 hypermarkets in Mexico. Carrefour also had problemscompeting with Tesco in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. InGermany, the company faced tough competition from Aldi andLidle, two successful discounters. On the other hand it boughtstores in Poland, Italy, Turkey and opened new stores in China,South Korea, China and Columbia. Carrefour has now becomemore careful in selecting markets. The company is eager to enter the Indian market, but found out in late 2006 that Wal-Mart will doso as well.In France, where Carrefour is well established, the company madethe big mistake in its pricing policy. It probably started with the1999 merger with Promodes, the French discount chain. Carrefour confused the French clientele by losing its low-cost image;

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