Quinn played cards close to his chest

Thanks to its limelight-loving founder and long-time chief executive, Sen Feargal Quinn, Superquinn has had a high profile virtually from its beginnings in 1960 in Dundalk.

But for a long period the company has kept key financial information very much out of the limelight. Sen Quinn told his colleagues at a recent Oireachtas committee hearing that the company's competitors, namely Dunnes and Tesco, also keep this information to themselves, so he did not think that he should allow sensitive information into the public domain.

Superquinn is an unlimited company. Amongst other things, this means that it does not have to publish accounts with its annual returns. Several of its competitors are secretive (others are not, Musgrave publishes full annual accounts) but they do not hold their financial information quite as close.

Last year, Tesco said that its sales for the 12-months to the end of February 2004 were just over €2 billion.

This represents a quarter of the Republic's €8 billion-a-year grocery market. Superquinn had close to 9 per cent of that market at the end of last November, which means, in theory at least, the value of its sales for last year fell between €800 and €900 million.

Margins in grocery retailing are between 2 per cent and 4 per cent. The lower end of this scale would give it operating profits, before any write-offs, tax or interest, of around €180 million. The company is said to have considerable debts, but nobody will say how much it owes.

Sen Quinn established the business in a 200 square metre store in 1960.

Competitors speak enviously about his marketing talents, which he used to sell Superquinn very effectively to shoppers in Dublin and Leinster. They also point out that the business he built very much bears the stamp of his personality.

For this reason, they suggest that it lost some of its edge as he began to pay more attention to politics and less to fruit and veg.

On one occasion it lost more than its edge. In the late 1990s, both Sen Quinn and Superquinn also lost a little of their sheen. It emerged that the company had been demanding "hello money" from suppliers who wanted to sell stock to new outlets.

The practice of taking payments from suppliers in return for giving them business is illegal. It no longer goes on, and the cases that were uncovered were ultimately seen as minor embarrassments.

That aside, industry sources now believe that it needs new blood and new capital to compete. Its new owners will give it a share of both. It will be interesting to see what they do with its image.