Bright Food Group Co. Ltd., Shanghai’s biggest food and dairy company, is in discussions about a possible purchase of the U.K.’s United Biscuits from Blackstone Group and PAI Partners.
The Sunday Times reported today that Bright Food is in exclusive talks to buy United Biscuits, the maker of Jaffa Cake and McVitie’s cookies, in a transaction that may be valued at 2 billion pounds ($3.2 billion).
“Bright Food is now in talks about buying United Biscuits,” Chen Chunshan, a company spokesman in Shanghai, said in a phone interview today. He declined to comment further.
Blackstone and PAI in July hired Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. to prepare an auction of United Biscuits and food companies including Campbell Soup Co. and Nestle SA may be interested, the Sunday Times said, without saying where it got the information. N.M. Rothschild & Sons Ltd. was hired by Bright Food as an adviser, the newspaper said.
United Biscuits was founded in 1948 after the merger of two Scottish companies, McVitie & Price and MacFarlane Lang, and its brands are sold in more than 100 countries. Its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization rose 14 percent last year to 223.24 million pounds on sales of 1.26 billion pounds last year, according to its annual report.
Acquisition
Blackstone and PAI bought the company in 2006 for $3 billion. Phone calls today to United Biscuit’s head office in Hayes outside London and its business center in Liverpool went unanswered.
Bright Food is a four-year-old business partly owned by the Shanghai Municipal Government and Shanghai DaSheng Holdings Co. Ltd., according to information on its website.
In July, Bright Food failed to buy CSR Ltd.’s Australian sugar unit, beaten to the $1.5 billion acquisition by Wilmar International Ltd. Its Bright Dairy & Food Co. unit won regulatory approval today from New Zealand to buy a 51 percent stake in Synlait Milk Ltd., a milk processing company converting more than 300 million liters of milk a year. The deal is still waiting for approval from the Shanghai government, according to a statement.
Peter Rose, a Blackstone spokesman in New York, and Natasha Baxter, a spokeswoman in London, didn’t immediately respond to phone messages seeking comment from Bloomberg News. Blackstone and Rothschild declined to comment, the Sunday Times said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Lars Paulsson in London at lpaulsson@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dick Schumacher at dschumacher@bloomberg.net
http://jodnet.blogspot.com
The Sunday Times reported today that Bright Food is in exclusive talks to buy United Biscuits, the maker of Jaffa Cake and McVitie’s cookies, in a transaction that may be valued at 2 billion pounds ($3.2 billion).
“Bright Food is now in talks about buying United Biscuits,” Chen Chunshan, a company spokesman in Shanghai, said in a phone interview today. He declined to comment further.
Blackstone and PAI in July hired Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. to prepare an auction of United Biscuits and food companies including Campbell Soup Co. and Nestle SA may be interested, the Sunday Times said, without saying where it got the information. N.M. Rothschild & Sons Ltd. was hired by Bright Food as an adviser, the newspaper said.
United Biscuits was founded in 1948 after the merger of two Scottish companies, McVitie & Price and MacFarlane Lang, and its brands are sold in more than 100 countries. Its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization rose 14 percent last year to 223.24 million pounds on sales of 1.26 billion pounds last year, according to its annual report.
Acquisition
Blackstone and PAI bought the company in 2006 for $3 billion. Phone calls today to United Biscuit’s head office in Hayes outside London and its business center in Liverpool went unanswered.
Bright Food is a four-year-old business partly owned by the Shanghai Municipal Government and Shanghai DaSheng Holdings Co. Ltd., according to information on its website.
In July, Bright Food failed to buy CSR Ltd.’s Australian sugar unit, beaten to the $1.5 billion acquisition by Wilmar International Ltd. Its Bright Dairy & Food Co. unit won regulatory approval today from New Zealand to buy a 51 percent stake in Synlait Milk Ltd., a milk processing company converting more than 300 million liters of milk a year. The deal is still waiting for approval from the Shanghai government, according to a statement.
Peter Rose, a Blackstone spokesman in New York, and Natasha Baxter, a spokeswoman in London, didn’t immediately respond to phone messages seeking comment from Bloomberg News. Blackstone and Rothschild declined to comment, the Sunday Times said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Lars Paulsson in London at lpaulsson@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dick Schumacher at dschumacher@bloomberg.net
http://jodnet.blogspot.com
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