TOKYO (AFP) – Executives from Canada’s Alimentation Couche-Tard are in Japan in a bid to overcome resistance to their USD47-billion takeover of 7-Eleven’s parent but are being given the cold shoulder, according to interviews published yesterday.
Seven & i Holdings last month rejected a USD40-billion takeover bid – representing the biggest foreign takeover of a Japanese firm – but the Canadian side has since sweetened the offer by around 20 per cent.
“We have invited (Seven & i management), we have tried to organise a meeting, but it didn’t work, but it will eventually,” ACT chairman and founder Alain Bouchard told Bloomberg News in Japan.
“We also want to gain a better understanding of the Japanese culture, but mainly now the Japanese concerns” around the deal, he said in the interview. “We want to obviously introduce ourselves because people don’t know us.”
Bouchard also told the Nikkei daily that they had asked to meet Seven & i President Ryuichi Isaka and his team but that the request “was declined”.
