Falic family poised for further expansion?

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Exclusive: By Martin Moodie and Adele Wolstenhulme

The Falic family, new owners of Duty Free Americas (formerly World Duty Free Americas), may be poised to pull off another headline-grabbing acquisition, Travel Retailer International can reveal.

Duty Free Americas president Leon Falic told TRI: "Already we're looking at a couple of acquisitions and a few other airport bids. One of the acquisitions might be more exciting than this one [WDFA]....we're talking bigger. We're looking at all possibilities. We didn't get overwhelmed by this first deal."

The two obvious possibilities that fit the dual criteria - being bigger than World Duty Free Americas and available - would be The Nuance Group and, arguably, DFS Group. Bernard Arnault, chairman of DFS' owner LVMH, has described DFS as "non core" though the company has subsequently said there is "no question" of the business being for sale. The Nuance Group is being sold by Swissair, with a new owner expected to be named from a shortlist of eight bidders any day.

Asked if his group was bidding for Nuance or trying to buy DFS, Falic declined to elaborate further. But he emphasised that the company's ambitions in duty-free were long-term, serious and global.

"We're looking to expand in airport retailing," he added. "That's where we feel our growth should be. We're hoping to gain more contracts both in the US and outside the US. We're looking at several major airports around the world. We bought Duty Free Americas as a platform and from there we are going to expand-both by acquisition and by organic growth."

Falic added that his company has no current intentions to break up Duty Free Americas, though he conceded offers had been made for parts of the business.

COMMENT: Is the Falic family set to emerge as an international retailing force? Sceptics will dismiss the possibility but both chairman and chief operating officer Simon Falic and president Leon Falic claim to be deadly serious about such aspirations, saying they hope to grow into a $0.5bn turnover company in the near future through organic growth alone. If they are indeed serious about acquiring another leading retailer, that could propel the company into becoming the industry's biggest operator - some turnaround for an entrepreneurial family that freely admits to sourcing from the grey market during the aggressive rise of US discount chain Perfumania. Whatever one's view, there is no doubting the fact that the industry's newest player is serious about international expansion - and soon.