By Sirsendu Sen
Executive Summary Following the takeover of Safeway in 2004 and successful completion of the restructuring work, WM Morrison is now ranked at 4th position in the UK (Global Rank 32nd), according to the Global Powers of Retailing Report (Deloitte LLP, 2012). To maintain the growth momentum, the Policy and Development department are currently exploring a number of expansion strategies. In particular, a couple of potential candidates for acquisition in the South African retail market have been identified as below:
1) PicknPay Stores Ltd (Global Rank 133rd) and 2) Shoprite Holdings Ltd (Global Rank 92nd) The purpose of this report is to carry out a broad level comparative financial analysis of both of these companies in order to evaluate if any of them can potentially be a right fit for our growth strategy. Approach To carry out the comparative financial analysis, “CORE” framework (Moon & Bates, 1993) has been utilised which focuses on the analysis of the key financial ratios in the context of external environment in