Carrefour hires "The Cleaner" a man who has shown he can turnaround a company and keep shareholders happy.

Georges Plassat, Carrefour (CA) SA’s fourth chief executive officer in eight years, relishes a challenge. Plassat, a man who shuns the limelight, must pull off what Olofsson and a procession of chief executives before him failed to do: fix Carrefour's struggling European hypermarket business and halt market share loss in the company's core French market.

Plassat's experience at Vivarte, owner of brands such as Andre shoes, Kookai womenswear and discount retailer La Halle aux Vetements, could be crucial in helping Carrefour revive its underperforming hypermarkets, analysts say. His stroke of genius came in 2000 when he identified loss-making shoe retailer Groupe Andre as a bargain and eventually transformed it into the profitable Vivarte with sales of over 3 billion euros.


Unlike his predecessor, Lars Olofsson, who came to Carrefour from Nestle SA (NESN) in 2009, Plassat has a pedigree in food retailing, having served as CEO of French supermarket operator Casino Guichard-Perrachon SA (CO) and run Carrefour’s Spanish business between 1997 and 1999. Plassat will start at the company on April 2 as chief operating officer and become chairman and CEO after the June 18 shareholder meeting.

The CEO’s first and biggest challenge will be to address Carrefour’s price image, Carrefour is perceived to be less competitive than its rivals in France.