Preface
Cooperation and independence
The fates help those who help themselves. With this apt proverb in mind, Ahold
has been actively preparing itself for the challenges and opportunities of a
unified European market. Seeking the right balance between cooperation and
independence, Ahold has joined with other prominent and successful European retail
ers to form the European Retail Alliance sc (ERA) and AMS Marketing Service ag.
In 1989, Ahold focused on getting these two cooperative initiatives off to a solid start; in
the coming years we will increasingly seek to pool our resources with domestic and
international partners to create synergies enabling us to achieve our ambitious goals.
The benefits of synergy are not restricted to Europe. Ahold has attained sufficient scale
in the United States to enjoy similar advantages there. Under the auspices of Ahold
USA, our three American supermarket chains established closer working relationships
in 1989, and we expect to begin to reap the fruits of this in the near future. Ahold's other
priority in the United States is to reinforce the strong regional market positions of its
existing chains. Wherever local market leadership is lacking, we set ourselves the task of
achieving it.
6
Corporate Executive Board:
II tor)
Cees van der Hoeven
Rob Zwartendijk
Pierre Everaert
Fritz Ahlqvist
and Peter van Dun
