Atlantic was a large supermarket

Supermarket

A supermarket, a form of grocery store, is a self-service store offering a wide variety of food and household merchandise, organized into departments...

 chain in Greece

Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....

. Atlantic supermarkets were founded in 1980 by Panayiotis Apostolou. Up to 1985 the company was a small chain with just 5 stores. After 1985 the company expanded rapidly through both organic growth

Organic growth

In finance, organic growth is the process of businesses expansion due to increasing overall customer base, increased output per customer or representative, new sales, or any combination of the above, as opposed to mergers and acquisitions that are examples of inorganic growth. Typically, the...

and a number of acquisitions and takeovers. Atlantic was a public company and its shares used to trade in the Athens Stock Exchange from 2000 up to 2010. As of 2006-2007, the company had 182 stores nationwide and was the fifth largest supermarket chain in Greece as measured by market share. The company had also operated a franchise network of smaller stores branded ARISTA. Since 2009 the company had sufferd from serious financial difficulties (mainly due to excessive borrowing) and eventually (in 2011) went into liquidation. The company ceased all trading as of 3 Auguast 2011.

External links

• Atlantic supermarkets website (in Greek and English)