This businessman is about to stay with GARBARINO

Neither the measures imposed to combat the coronavirus, nor the strong economic crisis that the country is suffering precisely as a result of sanitary restrictions stopped the operation to change the owner of Garbarino.

The sale would be signed in the coming days and the new owner of the country’s main home appliance chain would be Carlos Rosales, main reference of the insurance group Prof and current treasurer of San Lorenzo de Almagro.

If there were no last-minute inconveniences, the businessman would have won the race for the owners of Covelia, a waste collection firm in much of the Buenos Aires suburbs and closely linked to the unionist Hugo Moyano.

The decision to opt for Rosales would already be 85% finalized and would have been made by the brothers by their owners, Daniel and Omar Garbarino, and Carlos García, CEO of the firm and in charge of finding a buyer.

The agreement includes the beginning of a 30-day due diligence period that would start next week so that Rosales can know in detail the numbers of Garbarino and try to close an agreement with suppliers that claim a debt of around $ 7 billion.

The treasurer of San Lorenzo would also have promised to pay half the salaries of the 4,200 workers that the chain employs, whose income is around an average of $ 63,000 since the other 50% is in charge of the national State under the ATP program. launched by the Government to help the private sector in this scenario of deep crisis.

Your goal, if you are finally left with Garbarino, is to use the power of the brand and its track record in this business to boost online sales and transform it into a kind of delivery point store. In other words, customers not only buy household appliances in physical stores but also through electronic commerce, adding to this the placement service together with the delivery service.

Garbarino: details of the negotiation

But beyond the commercial strategy, Rosales would have received indirect help from Armando Cavalieri. The head of the Trade Union would have put the cry in the sky when considering the possibility that Moyano landed in his sector from Covelia.

The partners of this company already had an agreement with the creditor banks to restructure the financial debt of $ 5 billion with a significant write-off.

However, Cavalieri reportedly made his anger known to the Minister of Labor, Claudio Moroni, and other government officials for whom it is more than clear that it is not a time of conflict between two of the strongest unions in the country.

This political path would have finished defining the transaction in favor of the owner of the Prof group, who also owns assets in the hotel and gastronomy sector through the restaurant.

Beyond the payment of wages, Rosales has an important path to pay not only the $ 7 billion with suppliers, but the other $ 5 billion that Garbarino owes to a group of banks.

Precisely, that liability was the one that triggered the need for a change of owner, after the main creditors such as Santander and Galicia, reached an agreement with the Garbarinos to restructure that liability with a strong drawdown but also with an agreement to capitalize the money in shares and go out to offer the company in the market.

Initially, the Inverlat fund was chosen, the group, owner of the Havanna coffee chain, which reached an agreement with the banks but later withdrew from the operation as it was unable to advance negotiations with foreign and local suppliers com Samsung, Carrier and LG, Newsan, Mirgor, BGH and Alladio.

In this context, the chain continued to function as best it could but the economic consequences of the government’s strong restrictive measures to prevent the circulation of the coronavirus have had a strong negative impact, to the point that it had to pay its staff only 30% of wages.

Strategy: food sales

To partially mitigate this new fall, Garbarino had to incorporate even food products and from other items to its usual supply of household appliances to survive in the midst of the quarantine that prevented it from having its almost 200 stores open.

Garbarino added food to its offer to cope with the crisis and the pandemic

To survive, he bet on the Marketplace that allowed him to increase his online sales and more than double his traffic on the networks with a package of merchandise that includes even noodles, wines, oils and preservatives.

Also almonds, mixed nuts, cashews, walnuts and a large number of stationery items such as notebooks, sticky notes set and pens.

To all of which we add products that are usually available in pharmacies such as nebulizers, sphygmomanometers, heating pads and even condoms.

A great online gondola that is found on the company’s website and that customers can receive by sending them to their homes, since the electrical appliance chains were included among those that can join the marketing of their products by delivery

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