US: Walmart has opened a new headquarters in Florida for its Latin American regional operations and announced a new chief executive for the region, Eduardo Solórzano. The former head of Walmart de Mexico has overseen the expansion of the chain from 694 to 1,329 stores and is now tasked with expanding Walmart's business across the continent.

"The opening of this new regional office reflects a renewed level of service and support Walmart Latinoamérica is ready to provide to our markets, to our associates, to our stores, and to the people in countries throughout Latin America," he said.

FRANCE: Carrefour has launched a new promotional campaign, PromoLibre, for Carrefour loyalty card holders in France. For food products, the shopper will get the cheapest item free if they buy three items from the PromoLibre range, and in non-food, SKUs in the promotion are discounted by 20%. The scheme is part of an initiative to reinvigorate Carrefour's French business.

RUSSIA: Rewe Group and Coop Switzerland have opened their third joint-venture cash & carry in Russia. The Selgros store has created 250 new jobs in Vnukovo, near Moscow.

"This underlines our successful course of growth in Russia even in times of general economic crises," said Uwe Roessler, managing director of Selgros. "The total investment amounted to approximately 15m. Further store openings in Russia are currently being planned."

AUSTRALIA: Woolworths claimed its efficiency saving programme had paid off, as it revealed first-half profits up 11.4%. Australia's biggest supermarket said that sales were up 4.2% to A$27.2bn in the 27 weeks to 3 January.

Chief executive Michael Luscombe said it was a strong result: "We have strongly grown profits while driving 3,500 prices in our Australian supermarkets business lower than a year ago," he said. "The work and investment over the past 10 years, in improving our systems and streamlining our back-end processes, mean we can deliver these benefits in a sustainable manner over the longer term."