LONDON, March 31 (Reuters) - Kingfisher, Europe'sbiggest home improvement retailer, said on Tuesday it plannedto close about 60 underperforming B&Q stores in Britain as thewider group posted a 7.5 percent fall in annual profit.
The planned store closures form part of a plan by new ChiefExecutive Veronique Laury to shake-up the 360-store B&Qbusiness.
Kingfisher, which trades as B&Q and Screwfix in Britain andCastorama and Brico Depot in France, made a pretax profit of 675million pounds ($998 million) in the year to Jan. 31.
That compares with analysts' average forecast of 674 millionpounds and is down from 744 million in the 2013-14 year.
Total sales rose 2.9 percent on a constant currency basis to10.97 billion pounds.
The results are the first to be presented by Laury, whosucceeded Ian Cheshire in December.($1 = 0.6766 pounds) (Reporting by James Davey; Editing by David Holmes)