Korea’s Homeplus To Be Sold At Auction
If any ROK Heads have a few billion dollars lying around you could use it to buy the Korean retail giant Homeplus if you are interested. It will be interesting to see what changes will be made once Homeplus is sold off:
Private equity groups are expected to submit final bids to take over the nation’s second-largest supermarket chain Homeplus, valued at about 7 trillion won ($5.86 billion), amid growing speculation that two Korean retail firms are mulling to join the deal when the preferred bidder is announced, according to sources on Sunday.
Five shortlisted private equity firms formed three consortiums for Monday’s final bidding for Homeplus, wholly owned by Tesco. The British retail giant put up its Korean unit for auction in a bid to scale back the mounting debt and fund a turnaround plan.
Sources said the Korean confectionery company Orion and local retail giant Hyundai Department store are eyeing to join the bid as strategic investors.
“As Orion continues to show a strong will to buy Homeplus, there’s potential that it will link up with a private equity fund to be selected as a preferred bidder,” an official at an investment bank said.
The snack-maker, which failed to make the final list of five bidders, has been seeking a foray into the supermarket industry as its growth slows.
The preferred bidder is expected to be announced in September while the takeover deal to be wrapped up by the end of this year. [Korea Herald]
You can read more at the link.
Why are Home Plus and Emart never located in the same service areas? Are they owned by the same company now? It seems Home Plus is in the south area, like Suwon and Emart is all the main Seoul and Gangnam areas? There would seem to be large underserved areas where both have functional monopolies, especially in Seoul with so relatively few Emarts for the large local populations.
observer it is all about politics.
And besides, there are both in Songtan.
Thanks I did not know Songtan had both in large scale. Its odd anyway that other countries (UK, US, Germany, etc.) with far less dense populations have 3 or more major stores fighting in the same areas and all run profits. It would seem that even HK with its high rents has more majors in the same areas than Korea has. Must be politics.
Aristotle wrote that all life is politics.