MONTREAL/QUEBEC CITY (Reuters) – Political opposition that killed Canadian convenience store operator Alimentation Couche-Tard’s $20 billion bid for French retailer Carrefour on Friday is unlikely to end the global ambitions of founder Alain Bouchard.
The low-profile Canadian businessman built Couche-Tard from a single store in Quebec in 1980 to a global network of convenience stores and gas stations with a market value of $33 billion, with 66 acquisitions along the way.
French politicians gave a strong ‘non’ to the proposed take-over, calling it a matter of national food safety. Behind the scenes, Bouchard made a misstep by not giving an early heads up to French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, who was extremely upset to learn about the deal from the media, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters.
Bouchard, 72, who served as Couche-Tard’s chief executive for 25 years until 2014, started in business after learning hard lessons as a child when his father, a subcontractor, went bankrupt.
“Couche-Tard is a master at converting dollars spent on gas on dollars spent on food and convenience store products,” Sylvain Charlebois, director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia.
“You fill up your car with gas and then you go get a sandwich, newspaper and cigarettes.”
