Apollo Bookstores Sold to Norwegians
When the Finnish company Sanoma agreed to sell the R-Kiosk chain to a Norwegian company in March, it also resulted in change of ownership of a number of commercial interests besides the prominent convenience store chain, including the Apollo bookstores and the magazine wholesaler Lehepunkt.
The Sanoma-owned Rautakirja announced earlier this month that it sold the Finnish-registered company R-Kiosk OY for 130 million euros.
That company manages subsidiaries in Estonia and Lithuania that, together with the ones in Finland, own over 1,000 of the R-Kiosk convenience stores.
Estonia's R-Kiosks were controlled by Rautakirja Estonia AS, which has also operated the Apollo bookstores and AS Lehepunkt since 2010.
The company's interests earlier extended to cinema, owning the Coca-Cola Plaza multiplex in downtown Tallinn before it was sold to the Swedish investment company Ratos in 2011.
Rautakirja's director Ivar Vendelin confirmed to Postimees that the entire company would soon be under one owner, the Norwegian firm Reitan Servicehandel, with the formalities to be concluded in May.
Kristopher Rikken