Eleven Leading Retail Companies to form WorldWide Retail Exchange; Web-based B2B Marketplace with Combined Sales of USD 300 Billion.Business Editors PLEASANTON, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 31, 2000 Eleven of the world's leading retailers, including Safeway Inc., today announced they will form a collaborative partnership to establish the WorldWide Retail Exchange. The new web-based, business-to-business exchange is expected to begin operating mid-2000. It is designed to facilitate and simplify trading between retailers and over 100,000 suppliers, partners and distributors. The participants are Albertson's (US), Auchan (France), Casino (France), CVS (1) (Concurrent Versions System) A version control system for Unix that was initially developed as a series of shell scripts in the mid-1980s. CVS maintains the changes between one source code version and another and stores all the changes in one file. (US), Kingfisher kingfisher, common name for members of the family Alcedinidae, essentially tropical and subtropical land birds, with affinities to trogons and swifts and related to the hornbill. (UK), K-Mart (US), Marks & Spencer (UK), Royal Ahold a·hold n. Hold; grip: "I knew I could make it all right if I got . . . back to the hotel and got ahold of that bottle of brandy" Jimmy Breslin. (The Netherlands), Safeway Inc. (US), Target (US) and Tesco (UK). Together the group operates over 30,000 stores and had 1999 combined sales of over Euro 300 billion (USD USD In currencies, this is the abbreviation for the U.S. Dollar. Notes: The currency market, also known as the Foreign Exchange market, is the largest financial market in the world, with a daily average volume of over US $1 trillion. 300 billion). Other prominent retailers are also invited to join the exchange and have expressed interest in the initiative. Cora, the leading French-Belgian retailer, has also taken the decision to join shortly. The WorldWide Retail Exchange is a web-based marketplace, enabling transactions between retailers operating in the food, general merchandise, and drugstore sectors. It is an open exchange and provides an information highway of publicly available item data together with private price and promotion information between multiple buyers and sellers. The exchange will also provide the means for auctioning products. Participating companies anticipate interaction on the WorldWide Retail Exchange to be more efficient due to standardized standardized pertaining to data that have been submitted to standardization procedures. standardized morbidity rate see morbidity rate. standardized mortality rate see mortality rate. item information. The WorldWide Retail Exchange is expected to lower costs in the supply chain for all participants. Initially, the founding members of WorldWide Retail Exchange will each hold 5% of the new company's share capital. The remaining equity will be re-considered by the WorldWide Retail Exchange when it is known how many other retailers wish to join the exchange. Currently, CEOs of the participating companies, or their representatives, form the Executive Committee. In the future, the WorldWide Retail Exchange is expected to be an independently managed company. The founding members will review major technologies and invite IT companies to work with the exchange. In the first few years, investment in the collaborative partnership is expected to amount to approximately Euro 100 million (USD 100 million). Savings generated from WorldWide Retail Exchange for the participating retail companies are expected to rapidly exceed costs. Commenting on the development, the participating retail companies said: "We're proud to be part of this innovative exchange, the largest of its kind in the world. We are particularly pleased that companies form both Europe and the United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. are part of the WorldWide Retail Exchange. This comprehensive initiative will reduce trade costs significantly, particularly benefiting our customers, our shareholders and our companies." Safeway Inc. is a Fortune 50 company and one of the largest food and drug retailers in North America North America, third largest continent (1990 est. pop. 365,000,000), c.9,400,000 sq mi (24,346,000 sq km), the northern of the two continents of the Western Hemisphere. based on sales. The company operates 1659 stores in the United States and Canada. The company's common stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) World's largest marketplace for securities. The exchange began as an informal meeting of 24 men in 1792 on what is now Wall Street in New York City. under the symbol SWY SWY Safeway, Inc. (stock symbol) . |
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