Our Members

Founded in the 1960s, Asda today is one of Britain’s leading retailers.  It has over 180,000 dedicated colleagues serving customers from 528 stores, including 25 ASDA Living stores, 23 depots and eight recycling centres across the UK (Great Britain and Northern Ireland).  It has its main home office in Leeds, Yorkshire and its George clothing division is based in Lutterworth, Leicestershire.   Asda serves over 18 million shoppers a week in store and its growing home shopping business serves over 98 per cent of UK homes.  Asda is part of the Walmart family, the world’s largest retailer.

C&A is the well-known fashion retailer with operations throughout Europe. Under the roof of C&A there are 10 exclusive brands such as Yessica, Clockhouse, Angelo Litrico, Canda and Westbury. C&A has 1.500 stores across 19 European countries and employs more than  36,000 people.  Recent annual turnover figures are over €6.5 billion.

Carrefour is Europe’s largest retailer and is a leading global player operating 15,661 stores (including franchisees) in 34 countries in Europe, Asia and Latin America. Its four main formats are hypermarkets, supermarkets, discount and convenience stores. Carrefour’s annual sales are over €107 billion in 2009 and the Group employs over 475,000 co-workers.

Delhaize Group is a Belgian international food retailer present in eleven countries on three continents. At the end of the third quarter of 2011, Delhaize Group’s sales network consisted of 3,362 stores. In 2010, Delhaize Group posted € 20.8 billion (USD 27.6 billion) in revenues and € 574 million (USD 762 million) in net profit (Group share). At the end of the third quarter of 2011, Delhaize Group employed approximately 154,000 people. Delhaize Group’s stock is listed on NYSE Euronext Brussels (DELB) and the New York Stock Exchange (DEG).

El Corte Inglés is a leading retailer in the Spanish market with a highly developed network of more than 1,317 stores in different formats and brands: department stores, hypermarkets (Hipercor), supermarkets (Supercor), fashion shops (Sphera) convenience stores (Opencor), DIY (Bricor) and phone articles (Telecor), plus travel agency business (Viajes El Corte Inglés) and insurance services. The department stores offer a full range of goods including food, fashions, furniture and cars and are also present in the Portuguese market. Its subsidiaries Sphera and Viajes El Corte Inglés operate in many European and American countries. The Group has a turnover of €16.4 billions and employs more than 102,700 people.

H&M Hennes & Mauritz AB (publ) was founded in Sweden in 1947 and is quoted on NASDAQ OMX Stockholm. The company’s business concept is to offer fashion and quality at the best price. In addition to H&M, the group includes the brands COS, Monki, Weekday and Cheap Monday as well as H&M Home. The H&M Group has approximately 2,500 stores in 43 markets. In 2011, sales including VAT were over € 14 million (SEK 128.788 million) and the number of employees was over 90,000.

IKEA is the world’s largest retailer in furniture and home furnishing with 280 stores in 26 countries.  Its sales for 2010 were approximately €23.1 billion. It has 127,000 co-workers and its stores are visited by approximately 626 million visitors per year. It distributes 197 million catalogues in 29 languages.

Inditex is one of the world’s largest fashion distributors, with eight sales formats - Zara, Pull and Bear, Massimo Dutti, Bershka, Stradivarius, Oysho, Zara Home and Uterqüe - boasting 4,948 stores in 77 countries, with 92,301 employees. Its turnover in 2009 was €11 billion.

Marks & Spencer operates 700 stores in the UK selling clothing, food and home products. Its international business continues to expand with 360 stores in 42 territories. It also has a growing e-commerce business. M&S employs over 78,000 people and has a turnover of over €10.9 billion (£9.7 billion - ERRT estimate based on May 2011 exchange rate).

Mercadona is a family-owned company bases in Spain. In 2010, the company had a turnover of € 16.4 billion, with 4.4 million households shopping at their supermarkets. The company has a network of 1,310 shops throughout Spain, with 63,500 employees.

METRO GROUP is one of the largest and most important international retailing companies. In 2010 the Group reached sales of € 67.3 billion. The company has a headcount of some 283,000 employees and operates more than 2,100 stores in 33 countries. The performance of METRO GROUP is based on the strength of its sales divisions which operate independently in their respective market segments: Metro/Makro Cash & Carry – the international leader in self-service wholesale, Real hypermarkets, Media Markt and Saturn – European market leaders in consumer electronics retailing, and Galeria-Kaufhof department stores.

Ahold is an international retailing group based in the Netherlands, with powerful consumer brands in the United States and Europe. It provides customers with great value and a convenient and innovative shopping experience with a wide range of products and healthy choices. Ahold operates in 12 countries and owns 3,000 stores with over 210,000 employees. In 2010, net sales were € 29.5 billion.

Tesco is the UK’s largest retailer, with Group sales of over € 79 billion (£ 67.6 billion - Tesco full-year sales 2010/11, converted to euro based on full-year exchange rate).  It operates supermarkets (including an expanding non-food business), convenience stores and retailing services – including Tesco Bank, online businesses and Tesco Mobile – in its core UK market. Tesco has growing overseas operations in Europe, Asia and the USA. It operates in 14 markets with over 5,300 stores and employs around 490,000 staff worldwide.