Dragan Filipovic, General Manager of Serbian Delta Maxi, said that in three years time Delta Maxi planned to be in a leading position on the market in the Balkans and the wider region.
Speaking on October 3 at a conference in Sofia entitled Second Decade of Growth: Risks and Opportunities, organised by Bulgarian weekly Kapital and German daily Handelsblatt in co-operation with Bulgarias Confederation of Employers and Industrialists, Filipovic said that Serbian Delta Maxi was currently expanding into Bulgaria, Macedonia, Croatia, Montenegro and the Ukraine.
In September 2007 Delta Maxi bought a majority stake in Bulgarian retailer Piccadilly.
The company planned to invest 210 million euro, Filipovic said, and it aims to balance out the export ratio deficiency between Bulgaria and Serbia. Currently Bulgarian exports to Serbia are only half those of Serbian exports to Bulgaria, with the latter amounting to $125 million (88.16 million euro).
Chief executive of retailer Picadilly, Stefan Kossev said that Picadilly needs Delta because it is an investor with good knowledge of the local market as the Bulgarian and Serbian markets are very similar.
For strategic purposes Piccadilly preferred to have a peer investor, Kossev said.
