Despite the economic crisis In 2009, Picard has indeed seen its sales double in ten years, to 1.15 billion euros last year, this ultimately make Picard continued to gain market share. Picard was originally a small business in blocks of ice formed in 1906, for now! According to statistics, It now has 823 stores in France and 30 in Italy & a total of 4,000 employees.

The latest is, Picard is about to change ownership again, passing for the third time in ten years under the supervision of an investment fund, Lion Capital, attracted by the continued expansion of the French distributor of frozen foods.

A couple of days before, Lion Capital announced it had entered into exclusive negotiations with the current owner of Picard, the fund BC Partners. The process of informing staff will begin by the end of the week and then a formal agreement will be signed for a closing of the transaction expected in the fourth quarter of 2010, according to a statement. The amount of the bid from Lion Capital, a London-based group already owns the Findus frozen foods in particular, has not been specified, however it is expected that he would reach 1.5 billion euros.

The chain is frozen first bought in 1994 by the French giant Carrefour distribution, which differs from it in 2001 to 920 million euros in funds led by Candover Partners. They remain the only three years, but in passing pocket a tidy capital gain by reselling Picard to BC Partners € 1.3 billion at the end of 2004. An investment more profitable that each time the operation was performed via a method called LBO ( leveraged buyout ), which is to substantially fund the acquisition through bank loans. The debt is then repaid over the resources of the acquired business.BC Partners may well derive from the sale of Picard double what they had directly invested six years ago.