Alimentation Couche-Tard (ACT) will continue its friendly pursuit of Seven & i, executives said.
ACT’s top executives visited Tokyo this week to speak with media about its $47 billion bid to buy Seven & i. Founder Alain Bouchard, CEO Alex Miller and CFO Filipe Da Silva held the media briefing.
“We are continuing to pursue a friendly, mutually agreeable transaction” with Seven & i, Alain Bouchard, Couche-Tard’s founder and executive chairman, said at a news conference in Tokyo on Thursday. “We believe our proposal provides clear value to all stakeholders and should be generally and adequately considered,” he said.
The ACT executives “expressed disappointment about the lack of engagement with Seven & i, while sounding confident that they can overcome antitrust issues in the U.S. that the 7-Eleven owner has raised as one of its biggest concerns regarding the takeover proposal,” wrote the WSJ.
Earlier this week, in a letter to shareholders, Seven & i wrote that Couche-Tard recently agreed to jointly explore a potential sale of some stores prior to signing a takeover agreement.
Seven & i also said that “now is the right time to advance business initiatives in parallel with its discussion with Couche-Tard and that the company remains focused on identifying all options to improve shareholder value,” wrote the WSJ.
Reuters reported that “the Japanese public has worried that a foreign takeover could lead to a deterioration in the quality of 7-Eleven products, particularly fresh food.”
Replying to a question about possible changes to the sell-by date of rice balls, Miller said Couche-Tard would retain the team handling fresh food at Japan's 7-Eleven stores.
In an update released prior to the Tokyo event, Couche-Tard stated: “We have tremendous respect for the Japanese operations of Seven & i and consider the 7-Eleven convenience operations in Japan to be world-leading. We are committed to maintaining the quality, value and service levels of 7-Eleven there. We believe that we can learn a considerable amount from the offering of 7-Eleven Japan and its supply chain, and take this Japanese excellence to the rest of the world.”