Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said Tuesday that it has hired an executive from BP Plc’s Russian oil joint venture to help lead its Moscow office ahead of a possible expansion into the country.
Wal-Mart hired Avril Conroy, formerly of TNKBP, as part of the company’s management team, said Kevin Gardner, a spokesman for the Bentonville-based retailer. He declined to provide her title or start date.
Wal-Mart, which has no stores in Russia, is examining how to enter the country using acquisitions, according to international chief Doug Mc-Millon, who visited at least twice in the past year. Buying a retail chain would help Wal-Mart grow faster than if it opened its own stores, he said last month.
“It’s not too late for Wal-Mart to enter Russia, but if Wal-Mart wants to be a leading retailer there, they should enter as soon as possible,” Milos Ryba, an analyst at consultant Planet Retail in London, said in a telephone interview. “It would be stu-pid to grow organically. It’s so difficult.”
Conroy worked in the marketing division until a couple of weeks ago, according to a TNK-BP spokesman. She had been with the company since 2003.
Stephan Fanderl, who previously headed Wal-Mart’s Moscow office, quit last November. The retailer has added 30 employees in Russia since 2008 after opening an office there. The company gets about one-quarter of its sales from its international operations.
If Wal-Mart proceeded with a Russian expansion, it would compete with retailers like Groupe Auchan SA, a Frenchgrocer that operates about 40 superstores there. Carrefour SA, Europe’s largest retailer, said last October that it would pull out of Russia after less than a year in the market. U.K. retailer Tesco Plc has said it isn’t looking to the region, focusing instead on China and the U.S. for growth.
On Tuesday, BP - whose market value has fallen by about $70 billion as it respondsto an oil spill triggered by an April 20 explosion - named former TNK-BP executive Robert Dudley to lead its operations. Dudley, the first American head of Londonbased BP, ran TNK-BP from 2003 to 2008.
Information for this article was provided by Anastasia Ustinova, Annay Shiryaevskaya, Brian Swint and Stanley Reed of Bloomberg News.
Business, Pages 21 on 07/28/2010