Seven & i shares surge as founding family reportedly taking firm private

Shares of 7-Eleven owner Seven & i soared nearly 11% on Wednesday after a report said the company’s founding family was raising more than $50 billion to take the company private within this fiscal year.

According to a report by Japanese public broadcaster NHK, the founding family will raise over 8 trillion yen ($51.66 billion) from “three Japanese megabanks and major American financial institutions,” according to a Google translation of the report in Japanese.

The funds will be used by a special-purpose company to carry out a tender offer for Seven & i shares, with the goal to complete the plan by March 2025.

Should this acquisition go through, it will be the largest buyout of a Japanese company to date, NHK said.

Seven and i said “no decision has been made regarding a proposed deal with Junro Ito, Ito Kogyo, ACT [Alimentation Couche-Tard] or other third parties at this time,” Reuters reported.

Junro Ito is Seven & i’s vice president and the son of late Masatoshi Ito, founder of Seven & i. Ito-Kogyo is a company affiliated with the vice president, and is Seven and i’s second-largest stakeholder with an 8.2% stake.

Canadian convenience store operator Alimentation Couche-Tard initially made an offer of $14.86 per share to take over Seven & i in August. The offer was rejected, with Seven & i saying it “grossly undervalues” the company

ACT then reportedly raised its offer in October by over 22% to $18.19 per share, valuing Seven & i at 7 trillion Japanese yen, or about $47 billion. Seven & i said in a statement last month that it “has maintained, and intends to continue to maintain, the confidentiality of its current discussions with ACT at this time.”

In September, Seven & i was designated as “core” to national security in Japan, although the company said the designation was not related to the ACT takeover bid, according to a Reuters report.

A foreign investor must file for a national security review with the Japanese government if it intends to acquire a stake of 1% or more in a “core” Japanese firm.