Kesko

Kesko Oyj

Type	Public (Nasdaq Helsinki: KESBV)
Industry	Retail
Founded	1940; 77 years ago (1940)
Headquarters	Helsinki, Finland
Key people	Mikko Helander (President and CEO), Esa Kiiskinen (Chairman)
Services	Supermarkets and hypermarkets, hardware retail, auto sales, department stores, consumer durables, agricultural supplies
Revenue	€9.315 billion (2013)
Operating income	€248 million (2013)
Profit	€185 million (2013)
Number of employees	19,489 (average, 2013)
Website	www.kesko.fi

Kesko Corporation (Finnish: Kesko Oyj) is a Finnish retailing conglomerate with its head office in Katajanokka, Helsinki. It is engaged in the food trade, the home and specialty goods trade, the building and home improvement trade, and the car and machinery trade. It also has subsidiaries in Sweden, Norway, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, and Belarus.

The key focus areas in Kesko's business operations are to strengthen sales growth and the return on capital in all divisions, to exploit business opportunities in e-commerce and in Russia, and to maintain good solvency and dividend payment capacity.

Kesko was formed when four regional wholesaling companies that had been founded by retailers were merged in October 1940.

The new Kesko company started operating at the beginning of 1941. The need to purchase goods for the shareholder-retailers and to support their business operations and start cooperation among them resulted in the forming of the K-retailer group.

By the end of the 1940s, Kesko's sales amounted to about 15 billion old Finnish markkas (equivalent to EUR 580 million in 2010), which was about 12% of the overall sales of the central companies operating in the Finnish trading sector.

Kesko Food is a key operator in the Finnish grocery trade. Kesko Food's main functions include the centralised purchasing of products, selection management, logistics, and the development of chain concepts and the store network.