SPAR WARS

Owners of 44 Spar shops go head-to-head with HQ

- Susan Puren

Spar group ltd and the group of stores owned under the Spar banner by the Giannacopoulos family, are involved in a dirty war of words and actions that could eventually reflect on the share price of the JSE listed company.

The 44 Giannacopoulos-owned Spar shops, that employ close on 3,000 people, claim in documents submitted to the KwaZulu-Natal High Court in Pietermaritzburg, that there has been an orchestrated series of attacks on them driven by the Spar Guild of Southern Africa (an association of Spar shop owners) and Spar Group Limited.

Spar, in turn, accuses the family group of bringing the brand into disrepute because of the numerous and ongoing labour court cases brought against them.

But it seems as though even the Labour Court cases could be part of the onslaught because once the newspaper headlines have subsided, the outcome of Labour Court cases is often a much watered-down version of what was originally claimed and reported in the media.

The trouble started more than a year ago when Spar decided at a closed meeting to cancel the Giannacopoulos Group’s membership of its Guild. Spar then took over all the Giannacopoulosowned stores on the back of an order obtained in the North Gauteng High Court, without prior notice to Giannocopoulos. After hearing the other side two days later as a matter of urgency, the very same court overturned the order and the stores were returned to the legal owners.