A group of private-equity investors working with grocery chain Supervalu have resumed talks to purchase Albertsons, submitting a new US$9.6bn bid, the Wall Street Journal reported today (19 January).
Citing people familiar with the issue, the report said that Albertsons’ board of directors met yesterday (18 January) and is expected to address the proposal today.
Albertsons announced that it was terminating sale negotiations in December, but said that it remained in talks with several undisclosed parties regarding the sale of underperforming sections.
Before this announcement, a group including Cerberus Capital, Supervalu and Kimco Realty, had been viewed as frontrunners in the takeover talks. CVS Corp, who operate drugstores across the US, had joined the group in a bid to purchase some of Albertsons’ drugstores.
The new bid is valued a few cents above US$26 per share and includes a structure to lessen antitrust concerns. Under the proposal, CVS would still take on various drugstores while Supervalu would sell its own Chicago stores and operate Albertsons stores instead, the report said.
