Metro/Praktiker Eastern promise

If you were trying to design an unpromising initial public offering, you couldn’t do much better than Praktiker. It’s a retailer and it’s based in Germany – home of the stay-at-home consumer. Its shares performed disastrously the last time it was listed a decade ago. And Metro, the German retail giant that owns Praktiker, has just tried and failed to sell it to private equity. Why on earth would sane investors buy the stock? One reason why they may is that the do-it-yourself chain is a well-run...