Couche-Tard is significantly increasing its bid for the owner of 7-Eleven after the convenience retailer felt grossly undervalued by the initial proposal. Now management is bound to consider the takeover, insiders believe.
National security issue?
Things are getting serious between Canadian Alimentation Couche-Tard and Seven & i Holdings, the Japanese owner of 7-Eleven. After a rejected bid of 14.86 dollars per share, amounting to about 38.5 billion dollars, Couche-Tard is now said to be bidding as much as 22% more: about 47 billion dollars. This was reported by anonymous sources to Bloomberg.
Seven & i confirms that there is a new (non-binding) proposal, but stresses that the negotiations remain confidential. The amount on offer is already much more convincing, analysts believe, to the extent that management is now forced to seriously consider it. Should the deal go through, it will be the largest overseas takeover of a Japanese company ever.
This week, Seven & i also publishes its own quarterly figures, along with the expected announcement that the company will divest assets anyway. Possibly, the Japanese group will sell part of its supermarket division or its banking arm Seven Bank. Admittedly, there are still political and regulatory obstacles to a takeover: just last month, the Japanese government declared the retail giant as ‘important’ for national security.