Weekly News Wrap: Chinese consumers splurge on luxury in Hainan; Reliance Retail opens first 7-Eleven store in India
And Meituan was fined $530m for breaking China’s anti-monopoly regulations.
From CNBC:
Chinese consumers opened their wallets to shop during the week-long National Day holiday, even as travel numbers fell compared to the previous year.
Sales at nine duty-free shops in the southern island province of Hainan totaled nearly $252.3 m (RMB1.64b) from 1-6 October, according to state media. That marked an increase of 75% from the same period in 2020, and more than four times more — or a 359% jump — compared to the same period in 2019, the report said.
Hainan has become a popular destination for Chinese shoppers who used to travel overseas before the pandemic to buy luxury goods.
Beijing’s “zero-tolerance” policy for controlling the pandemic means that stringent contact-tracing and lockdown measures can restrict travel at a moment’s notice — as they reportedly did this week for tourists in Xinjiang.
Read more here.
From Reuters:
Reliance Industries’ retail arm said it would roll out 7-Eleven convenience stores in India, days after Future Retail ended a similar deal with the U.S. chain.
Reliance Retail Ventures opened the first 7-Eleven round-the-clock convenience store in a neighbourhood in Mumbai on October 9. The deal marks the latest by the Reliance Group to rapidly expand its retail and e-commerce businesses to better compete with Amazon and Walmart’s Flipkart in India's nearly trillion-dollar retail market.
Future Retail said on October 5 it had mutually terminated an agreement with 7-Eleven as the companies were not able to meet targets of opening stores and paying franchise fees.
Reliance's $3.4b deal for the retail assets of Future Group has been stalled following Amazon's legal challenge.
Read more here.
https://www.reuters.com/world/india/reliance-retail-launch-7-eleven-stores-india-2021-10-07/
From Bloomberg:
China levied a $533m (RMB3.44b) fine on Meituan for violating anti-monopoly regulations, ending a months-long probe that had weighed on the country’s food-delivery leader.
The fine imposed by the State Administration for Market Regulation amounted to 3% of its 2020 domestic revenue, according to a statement. The company will also have to return $200.21m (RMB1.29b) of deposits stemming from exclusivity arrangements.
Billionaire Wang Xing’s firm was told to improve its commissions mechanism, ensure the legal rights of restaurant partners and step up protections for its delivery riders.
Investors are likely to regard the sanctions as letting Meituan off lightly, given Beijing’s intensifying scrutiny over the millions of blue-collar workers that power the gig economy.
Read more here.
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