Home Depot noticed its fourth-quarter gross sales in 2012 develop by thirteen.9{e40bf07cfccafe90ecf191afb3d4115842316e5240c5ae5c3563b8381b63e31a} compared with the fourth quarter in 2011. Lowe’s didn’t fare as well total—its gross sales for the quarter have been really down versus the earlier 12 months—but the determine was greater than expected and Sandy was credited for the unanticipated improvement. The same profiting-from-catastrophe state of affairs has been true after different main climate events—say, Hurricane Katrina in 2005. By any measure, superstorm Sandy was some of the horrific climate occasions in current reminiscence, responsible for nearly one hundred fifty deaths and more than $50 billion in damages.
Carrefour, which final month agreed to buy Brazil’s third-biggest food retailer Grupo BIG for about $1.three billion, also maintained its monetary and operational targets underneath its ‘Carrefour 2022’ strategic plan. “Our confidence in the success of our transformation plan, as well as in our ability to generate high money move, is additional strengthened,” Chairman and Chief Executive Alexandre Bompard said in a statement. Inflows in the first two weeks of April hit about $four hundred million to $4.9 billion, or about 9{e40bf07cfccafe90ecf191afb3d4115842316e5240c5ae5c3563b8381b63e31a} larger than an all-time high of $four.5 billion in the first three months of the yr. The pace …