A US private equity firm has won an auction for British supermarket group WM Morrison Supermarket PLC, the UK’s Takeover Panel which oversees merger and acquisition deals said on Saturday.
The panel said that Clayton Dubilier & Rice LLC (CD&R) bid ￡2.87 per share, beating private equity giant Fortress Investment Group, which bid ￡2.86, the panel announced in a short statement.
The winning bid values the company at about ￡7.1 billion (US$9.61 billion), Morrisons said.
Photo: AFP
Shareholders would have the final say on whether to accept the offer on Oct. 19.
Based in Bradford, England, Morrisons began as an egg and butter merchant in 1899, expanding to become Britain’s fourth-biggest supermarket by market share, after Tesco PLC, J Sainsbury PLC and Asda Stores Ltd.
The company, which employs more than 110,000 staff at nearly 500 stores across Britain, has been at the center of a bidding war for several months.
The auction was held because neither CD&R or Softbank Group Corp-owned Fortress lodged a final offer on their earlier bids.
Morrisons chairman Andrew Higginson said the company’s board approved CD&R’s final offer, which represented “excellent value for shareholders while at the same time protecting the fundamental character of Morrisons for all stakeholders.”
“CD&R have good retail experience, a strong record of developing and growing the businesses in which they invest, and they share our vision and ambition for Morrisons,” he added in a statement. “We remain confident that CD&R will be a responsible, thoughtful and careful owner of an important British grocery business.”
Last month, Morrisons posted a ￡54 million first-half loss after tax, blaming the knock-on effects of a global supply chain crisis and a truck driver shortage sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic and worsened by Brexit.
That contrasted with a net profit of ￡70 million last year, when the sector had been boosted by panic buying in the early stages of the pandemic.
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