Japanese retail giant Seven & i Holdings said today it had turned down Circle-K owner Alimentation Couche-Tard's $38.5 billion cash bid, rejecting an offer that would be the largest-ever foreign buyout of a Japanese company.
7-Eleven operator Seven & i said the takeover proposal was not in the best interest of shareholders and was likely to face significant antitrust challenges in the US, where the combined company would be the convenience store industry's biggest by a considerable margin.
Seven & i, which said last month it had received an offer from Canada's Couche-Tard without naming the price, disclosed the bid was at $14.86 a share and said it was open to "sincerely consider" any proposals.
But it would "resist any proposal that deprives our shareholders of the company's intrinsic value that fails to specifically address very real regulatory concerns," Seven & i said in a letter addressed to Couche-Tard.
"We do not believe, for several critical reasons, that the proposal you have put forward provides a basis for us to engage in substantive discussions regarding a potential transaction," said the letter sent from Stephen Dacus, the chair of the Seven & i special committee of independent directors that was formed to consider the offer.
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