El Corte Inglés

El Corte Ingles is the largest department store chain in Europe, occupies fourth place worldwide. With offices throughout the Iberian Peninsula and the Balearic Islands and Canary Islands, the company achieved a turnover of € 18.44 billion in 2005 (2004: € 16.91 billion ).

The name El Corte Inglés ( "The English Cut" ) comes from a tailor shop for children's clothing, which was founded in 1890 in Madrid. Ramón Areces Rodriguez 1939 acquired Tailoring and converted it in 1940 into a stock corporation. Since then, all kinds of goods are sold, the concept is similar to that of Galeries Lafayette (Paris), Harrods (London) and KaDeWe (Berlin). Since 2001, the first store outside Spain in Portugal ( Lisbon ) is operated. 2006, the second store was opened in Portugal, in a suburb of the second largest city, Porto. Another store is scheduled to open in Rome.

For El Corte Inglés group also includes

• Hipercor ( hypermarket chain)
• Telecor (telecommunications)
• INVESTRONICA (logistics, IT hardware )
• Editorial Centro de Estudios Ramón Areces ( Science Publishers )
• ( Open all Convenience Store, 24 /7) Opencor
• Supercor (supermarket )
• Supercor - exprés (supermarket ) and
• Sfera ( clothing).

In addition, there are further sub-organizations of the core company El Corte Inglés:

• Viajes ( Travel )
• Informática ( IT solutions )
• Cess ( property insurance )
• Seguros ( personal insurance )
• Financiera ( finance)