
Photo: VCG
Alibaba may buy a stake of German wholesaler Metro’s China operations, sources told Reuters Thursday.
Neither Alibaba nor Metro offered comment to Reuters. The report, however, comes after Alibaba’s major rival, Tencent, partnered with France’s supermarket chain Carrefour last year.
E-commerce giant Alibaba has been pushing more into offline retail since 2015, launched its own chain of tech-savvy supermarkets, Hema, in 2015. In 2017, Alibaba paid HK$22.4 billion ($2.86 billion) for 36.2% of the shares of Hong Kong-listed Sun Art Retail, a major operator of Chinese hypermarkets.
Related: China’s Online Giants Barrel Into Offline Retail