Thursday's quick notes

Lianhua, Wal-Mart, and Carrefour are all reportedly bidding to buy Trust-Mart, a Chinese chain of 100 stores in 20 cities. Lianhua is China's largest supermarket chain and is "indirectly controlled" by the Shanghai city government.

Carrefour's net income dropped 16% last year, but they are planning to spend aggressively (see the China note above). "The company said it plans to open 100 new "hypermarkets," huge stores that combine elements of grocery and department stores, in 2006, or more than twice the average number of openings between 2000 and 2004."

Network TV spending was down slightly in 2005. "The tallies are in line with last May’s upfront, when advertiser commitments fell to $9.1 billion from $9.3 billion the prior year. That drop-off is logical, because the comparison is to 2004, an Olympics and election year. Still, the final tally is surprising to industry-watchers. Veronis Suhler Stevenson and PriceWaterhouseCoopers projected a 2% increase in ad revenue for network TV for 2005 even after factoring in the loss of the Olympics."

Britain's supermarkets now sell as much non-food items department stores, according to the BBC. "According to Verdict Research, supermarkets generated non-food sales of £13.5bn in 2004 - just £1bn behind that of department stores. That fact marks the relentless rise of the supermarket, so much so that almost half of the people reading this will have bought an item of clothing from a supermarket this year."