Christian Haub is enjoying the view from above. The executive chairman of Montvale, N.J.- based A&P, who turned over day-to-day operations of the company to Eric Claus three years ago, has reshaped the long-suffering retailer behind deals that sold stores in Canada, Detroit and New Orleans, and bought stores in its Northeast base.

The arrangement — with Haub as the deal maker, and Claus as the merchant/operator — is working for A&P.

“The change came with the recognition that my strength was the strategic, longer-term view of what the company should do. I was good at engineering a transaction, negotiating a transaction, following it through the approval process and workingon the financing,” Haub told SN in a recent interview. “Eric’s strength is as a tremendous operator, having a very clear vision of how to run a food retailing business in the 21st century. I have to admit, he is much better at that part than I was.”

Although Haub took over as A&P’s CEO when he was in his early 30s, he brought a wealth of experience to the role. He represents the fifth generation of his family’s Germany-based retailing empire, the Tengelmann Group, which added a majority stake in A&P to its holdings in 1979. Haub described a childhood spent learning the family trade, including a lengthy apprenticeship before attending college in Austria. Today, three of Haub’s four children have already begun learning the business at A&P.

Haub spent two years at a New York investment bank before joining A&P’s real estate department in 1991.

“He was a very quick learner of the financial structures of the company. He had a natural talent for understanding the figures,” recalled Peter O’Gorman, a veteran A&P executive, since retired, who took Haub under his wing in his early years with the firm. “He also had a flair for marketing, which I think he gets from his father [Erivan Haub].

“He’s got a very broad view of business, and one of his strengths is to take a very long-term view, and see where the future growth is,” O’Gorman added.

Haub exercised these skills in 2005 when he engineered the sale of A&P’s Canadian businesses, a unique deal that generated a stake in buyer Metro Inc.; wiped clean a mountain of debt; and set the stage for the purchase of A&P’s Northeast rival Pathmark two years later.

Haub, in fact, said he was in talks with Pathmark’s Ron Burkle — an exercise not for the faint of heart — even before the Canadian deal was consummated. The Pathmark acquisition, completed late last year, provided Claus with another canvas for his merchandising touch.

“Now that we’ve proven to ourselves, and hopefully to the market, that we can successfully execute and integrate a major acquisition, we think there is more consolidation potential in this market and in adjacent markets,” Haub said. “That’s what I’m starting to work on again: identifying opportunities and thinking about how we can engineer another deal.”

— JON SPRINGER

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