TOKYO, Oct 10 — The Japanese owner of 7-Eleven announced plans today to focus on its core business, in a move seen as fending off a takeover bid by Canada’s Alimentation Couche-Tard.
Creating the new unit would allow Seven & i Holdings to rejuvenate 7-Eleven, the world’s biggest convenience store chain with more than 85,000 outlets worldwide, a quarter of them in Japan.
Seven & i rejected a takeover offer worth US$40 billion (RM172 billion) last month from Alimentation Couche-Tard (ACT), which owns Circle K.
Its 7-Eleven stores are a beloved institution in Japan, selling everything from concert tickets to pet food and fresh rice balls, although sales have been flagging.
The firm “resolved at the management meeting held today to establish an intermediate holding company... that will preside over the Company’s supermarket food business, specialty store and other businesses”, a statement said.
It said it would consider an initial public offering (IPO) of the new unit and bringing in strategic partners “to unlock value for the Company’s shareholders and other stakeholders”.
An improved share price would make a takeover attempt by ACT more expensive for the Canadian firm.
The firm had said that the ACT proposal, which would be the biggest foreign takeover of a Japanese firm, “grossly” undervalued its business and could face regulatory hurdles.
Seven & i said yesterday it had received a revised offer but declined to give details.
Bloomberg News and other media outlets reported that ACT had sweetened its offer by around 20 per cent to around ¥7 trillion.
ACT declined to comment.
Seven & i shares have climbed more than 30 per cent since the takeover saga began but are still trading below the reported level of ACT’s new offer.
Its shares closed up 4.7 per cent yesterday, having initially surged nearly 12 per cent on news of the new ACT offer. They fell less than a per cent today.
The new holding company will include 31 businesses, such as supermarket chains Ito-Yokado, York-Benimaru and baby goods shop Akachan Honpo.
Seven & i also said it plans to change its name, tentatively to 7-Eleven Corporation, which will be finalised at a shareholders’ meeting.
Couche-Tard, which began with one store in the city of Laval in 1980, now runs nearly 17,000 convenience store outlets worldwide.
In 2021, Couche-Tard dropped a takeover bid worth €16 billion for French supermarket Carrefour after the French government said it would veto the deal over food security concerns.
It is unclear if Japan’s new government under Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba would do the same, but the finance ministry designated Seven & i a “core” industry last month. — AFP
