Maxeda is a Dutch retail company owned by American investment firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. Activities Maxeda DIY Group is the market leader in the DIY segment and has 345 stores in the Benelux and more than 7,000 employees. Most stores have a floor space of 3,000 to 5,000 m² and carry the name Praxis in the Netherlands (195 stores) and Brico in Belgium and Luxembourg (153 stores). Annual turnover is approximately 1.3 billion. All stores have a total of more than 1 million m² of retail space, with more than 1.5 million customers in the store and online every week. History The company was created in 1999 after a merger of Vendex (with previously the largest chain Vroom & Dreesmann) and Koninklijke Bijenkorf Beheer (KBB) (with De Bijenkorf and Hema). From 1999 to 2004 it was called Vendex KBB NV. In 2004, it was announced that Vendex KBB NV would be taken over by a group of investors, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co (KKR), Change Capital Partners and AlpInvest Partners (united in the consortium VDXK Acquisition BV led by KKR). Change Capital later left VDXK. In July 2004, Vendex KBB was definitively taken over by VDXK after all shares were acquired by the group. Until 2 August 2004, Vendex KBB was listed in the Midkap index of Euronext Amsterdam. The company was converted from an NV into a BV, after a few months Koninklijke Vendex KBB BV was closed down, and the BV that had set up the investment company to buy Koninklijke Vendex KBB BV was renamed Vendex KBB BV. KBB stood for Koninklijke Bijenkorf Beheer, but because of the loss of the Royal designation, the K had become a letter without meaning. The company was based in Amsterdam with 25,000 employees (16,000 FTEs) in seven countries (the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Denmark, Germany, France and Spain) and net sales of more than €4 billion (2003/04). The CEO was Tony DeNunzio (chairman of the board). On June 14, 2006, the new owners of Vendex KBB announced that the name was changed to Maxeda to highlight a new business philosophy. In July 2007, HEMA was sold to the British investment company Lion Capital. The acquisition amount has not been released, but analysts estimate it to be approximately €1.3 billion, roughly equal to HEMA's 2006 sales. At the time, HEMA employed approximately 10,000 employees in 336 branches in the Netherlands,