Gerard Mulliez' Auchan: France's Wal-Mart Goes Global

Paris - Gérard Mulliez is France's Sam Walton: a frugal, plain-talking, small-town entrepreneur who parlayed a single storefront into a sprawling empire. And just as the Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) founder once did, he's shaking up the world of retailing.

Mulliez is patriarch of a secretive family that controls one of the world's biggest retail operations, with more than 7,000 stores and annual sales of some $95 billion. The family's two-dozen-plus companies include Auchan, a Wal-Mart-like big box; Decathlon, the world's biggest sporting goods retailer; and the European and Latin American operations of Midas (ADS) muffler. And they're gaining ground against competitors, especially in emerging markets, which hold the key to growth as sales in the U.S. and Western Europe have flattened.