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The Japanese company that owns 7-Eleven has received a revised takeover offer from its Canadian rival, Alimentation Couche-Tard. This comes after the initial bid, valued at approximately $40 billion, was rejected earlier this year. Couche-Tard, the parent company of Circle K convenience stores, is hoping this revised proposal will be more enticing to the 7-Eleven owner, potentially setting the stage for a major shift in the global convenience store landscape.
7-Eleven is the world's biggest convenience store chain and has more than 85,000 outlets worldwide, around a quarter of those in Japan. Seven & i Holdings did not give a figure for the revised offer from Alimentation Couche-Tard (ACT) but Bloomberg News and other media outlets reported that it totalled around seven trillion yen ($47 billion). The takeover, if realised, would be the biggest foreign buyout of a Japanese firm.
"As requested by ACT, the Company has maintained, and intends to continue to maintain, the confidentiality of its current discussions with ACT," Seven & i, Japan's biggest retailer, said in a statement.
The group's shares closed up 4.7 percent on Wednesday, having surged nearly 12 percent in the morning following reports that ACT -- which owns Circle K -- had hiked its offer by almost 20 percent. The reports said the new offer was sent to Seven & i on September 19 but said no substantive negotiations had taken place since then. Seven & i rejected ACT's first offer last month, saying the $40-billion proposal "grossly" undervalued its business and could face regulatory hurdles.
7-Eleven began in the United States but the franchise has been wholly owned by Seven & i since 2005. The stores are a beloved institution in Japan, selling everything from concert tickets to pet food and fresh rice balls. Couche-Tard runs nearly 17,000 convenience store outlets worldwide.
Japan's TV Tokyo reported that Seven & i is even considering changing its name "to demonstrate in name and substance that the company will focus on its mainstay convenience business".
Lewis Musonye
