Supermarkets: all over the shop If ever a company needed a serious redesign, Carrefour is it. And incoming chief executive Georges Plassat is bringing his jackhammer. Thursday's annual results for France's Carrefour carried the mark of a tough new approach. After reporting a 14 per cent drop in net profits last year, the world's second-largest retailer by sales cut its dividend in half. Further, upgrades to its poorly performing French hypermarkets, which generate about one-quarter of the company's revenue, have been shelved and capital expenditure will be cut by about one-quarter. The Belgian supermarket Delhaize will sympathise. Also on Thursday, the group announced a 17 per cent annual fall in earnings per share. It will now close almost a 10th of its stores in the US, where it generates half its revenues. Helpfully, Carrefour and Delhaize can check out Wm Morrison's results which were out on the same day. Despite dreadful economic conditions at home, the British supermarket group announced that EPS grew one-10th last year. Its success is partly down to picking two trends that Carrefour and Delhaize did not. First is falling demand for hypermarkets. Last quarter, Carrefour's French hypermarkets experienced same-store sales drops of about 5 per cent. In contrast, Morrison has trialled local convenience stores in three cities, and will now open a further 70 over the next two years. Second, Morrison recognised that shoppers remain price sensitive and did not increase prices with inflation. Same-store sales excluding fuel grew 2 per cent last year, compared with inflation of more than double that. In contrast, price rises at Delhaize's stores sent shoppers out the doors. By not being too greedy, Morrison's has found a way to ride out the downturn and avoid the reconstruction pain now necessary at its rivals.