Carrefour Boss Demands Protection After Dozens of Stores Looted During France Protests
By Joshua Kirby
The chief executive of one of France's largest supermarket chains called on the country's government to do more to protect retailers and said that dozens of the chain's stores were looted.
Alexandre Bompard, CEO of Carrefour, said in a post on X that 50 of the chain's stores had been looted during mass protests this weekend. Repair work will cost more than 10 million euros ($11.2 million), and some workers at franchised stores will be forced into part-time unemployment, Bompard said.
The worst-hit stores will be closed for some time while the damage is repaired, he said Sunday.
Cities across France were marked this weekend by some of France's biggest-scale protests in years as more than a half a million people took to the streets to express anger at the cost of living and proposed cuts to public spending. Those protests spilled over in some cases into looting and violence against property, leaving hundreds of police officers and firefighters injured and thousands of protesters detained.
Carrefour stores were hit in Paris, but also in other French cities like Rennes, Lille and Bordeaux, Bompard said.
"Behind this destruction there is a considerable human and economic cost," Bompard said in his post, written in French. "The Republic must protect its retailers."
Write to Joshua Kirby at joshua.kirby@wsj.com; @joshualeokirby
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 19, 2026 02:38 ET (06:38 GMT)
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