Two years ago, I happened to be visiting Kiev in the Ukraine, when the news broke that Dixons had an option to buy the Russian Eldorado chain of electrical shops.

It seemed to be quite a deal, as Dixons was paying no money up front, but had an agreement to buy the chain over a period of years.

I immediately hopped in a taxi to check out an Eldorado and it was obvious that the store format was a Dixons lookalike.

The financial press liked the news and Dixons shares rose well above £2, as investors hoped DSGi would do well in Russian.

Other financial pundits did not like the Russian legal system or the accounting standards, which were totally different from the way the UK did business.

A year after the first announcement, Dixons decided against investing in Russia and the value of DSGi shares has been going down ever since.

Last week, the Russian state authorities served notice through the courts that Eldorado owed more than £300 million in back taxes and that was only for trading up until 2005.

Eldorado’s chief executive, Igor Yakovlev, whom John Clare declared “a very rich man”, said the amount was too high and that some parts of the business might have to be sold to pay the bill.

Perhaps Dixons was right after all not to get involved with Eldorado.

DSGi continues to try out new ways of increasing revenue. This page has previously referred to Dixons websites that sell everything from car insurance to wine and holidays.

The latest venture to receive publicity is that Dixons aims to be a developer of games software for the PC, Xbox, and PlayStation. Dixons own games will be sold in the shops and will be available for download.

The production of games software is complex and the high development costs are often difficult to recover. Perhaps Dixons, with its wide distribution, will be even more successful than Sega and Nintendo. I wish them well.

Meanwhile, the share price continues to languish. At the time of writing, it was just 60p. It seems unthinkable that the value of the shares will go even lower.

IT must always be a temptation for the really big retailers to expand their businesses by trading overseas. Best Buy, the most successful retailer in America thought it could open stores in China and cash in on that expanding market.

Best Buy buys a great deal of electronic goods from China and already had an office in Beijing, so it thought it would be comparatively easy to set up a chain of retail shops.

Unfortunately, everything has happened very slowly. Best Buy’s second shop has yet to open after a delay that has run into years and the company has decided to completely exit retailing in China.

The French FNAC stores group has had a team scouring London for a retail site with at least 50,000 square feet of space.

FNAC stores are very popular in France and sell all kinds of electronics, as well as music, videos and games.

A FNAC store is best described as being very upmarket and looking like the very best of Comet combined with the best of HMV and a touch of the elegance of Harrods upmarket designer departments.

FNAC is owned by PPR, the group that embraces brands like Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent, so it is no surprise that the shops look so good.

Check out the fnac.com website:   www.fnac.com