Japan's Seven & i Holdings—owner of 7-Eleven—has appointed its first non-Japanese CEO as it strategizes to thwart a Canadian takeover. This leadership shake-up comes alongside plans to jettison billions in assets in order to shift the company from a broad general retailer to a "global convenience store champion." Stephen Dacus, the former head of Walmart in Japan and Seven & i's current board chairman, will replace Ryuichi Isaka in May. Dacus, the son of a 7-Eleven franchisee who spent his teen years working as night clerk at a California 7-Eleven, is fluent in Japanese. More:
- The company on Thursday said it intends to sell certain non-convenience store assets, among them supermarkets and other retail stores, to Bain Capital for $5.4 billion. That sale will close in September, reports the AP.
- Seven & i is also planning an IPO of shares in its North American 7-Eleven operations by the close of 2026. The IPO and asset sale proceeds will fund share buybacks, with the company hoping to buy back $13 billion in shares by the end of the decade. Seven & i's shares rose 6.1% in Tokyo on the news.
- The moves come on the heels of a failed takeover bid by Canada's Alimentation Couche-Tard, which counts Circle K among its brands. The New York Times reports it had offered roughly $47 billion for control of Seven & i, "the largest-ever foreign-led bid for a Japanese company." Dacus earlier characterized the bid as undervaluing the convenience store business and not fully taking into account US regulatory concerns.
- The Wall Street Journal sees Seven & i's decision to make its more than 13,000 US 7-Eleven branches a separate listed company as "an acknowledgment that 7-Eleven stores in the US and Japan, despite sharing a name and logo, differ significantly in their products and operations." The Japanese convenience-store unit—which is made up of 22,800 locations and offers vastly more fresh food items than their US counterparts—is the company's most profitable.
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