Business
22:42, 16-Sep-2017
S.Korea’s Lotte considers selling stores in China
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One of the largest South Korean conglomerates said it may sell its stores in China, Korea Herald reported on Friday.
The announcement came at a time when the firm is suffering losses because of South Korea’s deployment of an American anti-missile system.
It is the country’s fifth largest conglomerate.
The conglomerate's retailing arm Lotte Shopping said that it had “selected a managing firm and is considering selling Lotte Mart’s stores in China, but no details have been decided at present,” the report said, quoting a statement released Friday.
The disclosure came after the company denied for months that it would give up Chinese market and the group’s Chairman Shin Dong-bin said in March that the group hoped to keep running the business in China.
Lotte Shopping runs 112 chain stores under the Lotte Mart brand in the Chinese market and the revenue in the second quarter this year is one-tenth of sales as compared to the same period of last year.
To rescue its business in China, Lotte has injected about 318 million US dollars in March and another 300 million US dollars in August.
The sales have plunged from March after South Korea started the controversial deployment of the US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) systems, which is said to be a protection against DPRK’s missile attacks on South Korea.
Lotte provided the South Korean government with the site for the THAAD deployment as part of a land swap deal that triggered boycott from the consumers in China.