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Reuters
French retailer Groupe Fnac on Tuesday urged shareholders of takeover target Darty to take no action after South African retail conglomerate Steinhoff launched a rival $975 bid through its Conforama unit.
“Fnac is currently considering its options and urges Darty shareholders to take no further action at this time,” Fnac said in a statement issued by Darty, noting the Conforama offer was not unconditional and was open for at least 60 days.
Fnac is a large French retail chain selling cultural and electronic products, founded by Andre Essel and Max Theret in 1954. Its head office is in Le Flavia in Ivry-sur-Seine near Paris. While Darty is an electrical retailer based in France, with operations across Europe. The company was founded in 1957 by the Darty family in France, and is now a wholly owned subsidiary of the UK-based Darty plc. Besides France, it also has operations in Turkey, Italy and Spain, and formerly Switzerland.
On Monday, Steinhoff, the world’s biggest listed retailer by market capitalisation, said its offer had the support of Darty’s biggest shareholder, Schroder Investment Management, which owns about 14 percent of Europe’s thrid-largest electronics retailer.
In France and Luxembourg Darty owns 209 stores, which equal 274,400 square meters of selling space. At the end of 2006, Darty had 10,848 employees.
Steinhoff International is a South African-based international retail holding company, dealing mainly in furniture and household goods, which operates in Europe, Africa and Australasia. It was founded in 1964 by Bruno Steinhoff in Westerstede, Germany and moved its headquarters to South Africa in 1998. It went public on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.
In the UK, Steinhoff owns the high street brands Cargo, Harveys Furniture, Bensons for Beds and Sleepmaster. In 2011, Steinhoff bought Conforama, Europe’s second largest retailer of home furnishings, with over 200 stores in France, Spain, Switzerland, Portugal, Luxembourg, Italy and Croatia.