Summit Notebook

Check Out Line: World Cup boost to Europe sales peetering out

Check out how European retailers are a little downcast now about the ”World Cup” effect.

France had a spectacular flameout, and Germany, Spain and England have been struggling, leading experts to tell the Reuters Global Retail Summit that they were less optimistic about the boost sales could get from the World Cup mania sweeping the Old Continent.

DSG International, Europe’s No.2 electrical goods retailer, said on Thursday it had seen a 50 percent jump in sales of televisions in the run-up to the tournament and that sales volumes were up 30 percent on the last World Cup in 2006.

And Ian Cheshire, chief executive of Kingfisher, Europe’s biggest home improvements retailer, which has been selling garden gnomes dressed in the England team’s kit, said ”The mood effect is the thing that everyone is looking for, and based on the past week, I’m distinctly not counting on it.”

Cheshire and other disappointed European CEOs can take comfort in the knowledge there are still three weeks to go leaving some of the underachieving European teams time to pick up their game.

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What’s in a Name?

Mahindra Satyam’s president of global operations, Atul Kunwar, told us the “first instinct” was to drop the Satyam name when the company was acquired in the wake of India’s biggest corporate fraud.

“We all need to have a name; sometimes we like them, sometimes we don’t,” Kunwar said while explaining that the company known as Satyam Computers was also known for its “solidity” and “great delivery.”

Mahindra Satyam has managed to retain the 380 customers that the firm had when Tech Mahindra won an auction to take it over. The Satyam name may have been a hard sell after the scandal, but one organisation insisted that the old name was good enough to be displayed in lights: international football’s governing body FIFA.

As parent company Mahindra & Mahnidra is big in vehicles, Korean carmaker Hyundai objected to its logo being shown in the list of sponsors for FIFA events, Kunwar told us. So the old name stood during the Confederation Cup that was held in South Africa in June.

Of course, those fighting the company in a class action lawsuit in the United States may not seem too amused, but then again, does anyone in the country care about “soccer”?