On February 28, the leader of Ciudadanos in Castilla y León, Francisco Igea, called for a boycott of Dia for having a Russian owner, Mikjail Fridman, who has been included in the list of oligarchs sanctioned by the European Union for his ties with Vladimir Putin, whom he would even have financed. It was just a spark, but it caused a fire that spread like wildfire on social networks. The pressure was such that Fridman has been forced to leave the board of directors of LetterOne, a company through which he holds 77% of Dia’s shares.
And the company itself had to stand up to the CNMV denying that . That there is shouting on Twitter is something that nobody can avoid, but neither in the distribution sector in particular, nor in the business world in general, do they understand how someone with political responsibilities, as is the case with Igea, can call the boycott against a company that employs nearly 38,000 people, and that they would be the first to be affected in the event of a fall in the company. That without forgetting that Dia has a strong presence in Castilla y León, especially after in 2014 it bought the supermarket chain El Árbol. Dia’s situation is not easy at all. When Fridman took control through LetterOne in 2019, Dia was the third largest supermarket chain in Spain, with a 6.5% share, even approaching Carrefour, which was second at the time with 8.7%. But the reality has changed and, although the financial restructuring has made it possible to guarantee the viability of the business, and it now has only 4.6%. Lidl has already surpassed it, taking a 5.4% share and Eroski, which has 4.5%, is also getting closer to relegating it to fifth place.
Dia has been losing market share to all its rivals and, despite the fact that the company had predicted that it would return to profit this year, in 2021 it recorded losses of 257.3 million euros, which meant a decrease of only 29 .3% compared to a year before. The company has attributed this decline mainly to a 3.8% reduction in the number of stores at the end of the period and to the devaluation of the Brazilian real and the Argentine peso. Fridman has denied at all times that Dia will be affected by the sanctions approved against him – the European Commission has agreed to freeze all his assets and prohibit him from entering the territory of the Union -, recalling that, through LetterOne, he saved to Day of bankruptcy and that the investment vehicle has injected more than 2,000 million in the company. “We have the great aspiration of building a great company in Spain”, he said.
It doesn’t matter if he’s right or wrong. Dia is much more than LetterOne and, of course, much more than Fridman. There are many jobs that are at stake, not to mention the company’s extensive network of franchises, which leaves many small entrepreneurs in a situation of maximum vulnerability. Gratuitous attacks are pointless, especially if they come from the political realm. It’s inconsistent.
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