International Business

Seattle - Starbucks Coffee Co. plans on making a connection with French consumers.

The retailer is partnering with and Casino Restauration, the restaurant subsidiary of mass merchandiser Groupe Casino, to open Starbucks stores within Géant Casino hypermarkets and Casino supermarkets across France.

St. Louis -- Ikea is expanding in the Midwest.

The chain will open a store in St. Louis on Sept. 30. It will be the Swedish company’s first store in Missouri, and 41st in the United States.  

The 380,000-sq.-ft. St. Louis Ikea is being built on 21 acres along Interstate-64 at Vandeventer Avenue. It will house Missouri’s largest rooftop solar array, consistent with the Ikea renewable energy presence at 90% of its U.S. locations.

Seattle – Amazon.com is heading east with its Amazon Web Services (AWS) hosted cloud computing platform – all the way to India.

AWS will launch an “infrastructure region” in India in 2016, meaning customers there will have access to locally based hosted cloud services.

Two days before Kraft shareholders are scheduled to vote on a merger with Heinz, the company announced a slew of new executives.

Paulo Basilio was appointed executive vice president and CFO, having joined Heinz in June 2013 as CFO. Kraft's CFO James Kehoe and other Kraft executives are being let go in 30 days or when the merger is completed, Heinz said in a statement.

San Jose, Calif. – The long-anticipated separation of eBay Inc. and PayPal Inc. into two independent, publicly traded companies is almost here. Now that the split has received official approval from the eBay board of directors, it is expected to occur July 17.

As retailers continue to benefit from surging sales in the candy aisle, Ikea is expanding its grocery offerings with European sweets.

The retailer announced it is venturing into the candy business by bringing over treats from Europe and installing in-store candy shops, which will offer Lördagsgodis "pick and mix sweets" at select stores across the country.

Aliso Viejo, Calif. - Johnny Rockets is expanding into Poland, with its first Polish location expected in Warsaw in early 2016. The casual dining chain has reached a development agreement with HDS Polska Group to build and operate 10 Johnny Rockets restaurants during the next 10 years.
.
HDS Polska Group is a subsidiary of publicly-traded company Lagardere Services that operates a network of more than 800 outlets in the Polish market including convenience stores, coffee shops and full service restaurants.

Lululemon Athletica has named a former Walgreens executive as the athleisure company's next digital chief.

Lululemon announced that Miguel Almeida will be executive vice presiden-digital when he starts with the company in mid-July. He will report to the company’s CEO, Laurent Potdevin.

The Consumer Goods Forum has elected two new board members with broad packaged goods and retail experience.

Denise Morrison, president and CEO of Campbell Soup Company, and Gareth Ackerman, chairman of Pick n Pay, are joining the board. Morrison will chair the Manufacturer College of the board while Ackerman will chair the Retailer College. The pair will lead the CGF Board for two years, and replace outgoing co-chairs Dick Boer of Royal Ahold and Paul Bulcke of Nestlé. 

One of the world's biggest fashion retailers says the strong U.S. dollar hurt profits in the second quarter, but the company is moving ahead with plans to increase investments and even launch a new brand in 2017.