The Co-operative Group is gearing up to sell-off part of the Somerfield store portfolio it acquired for £1.5bn last month.
Investment bank Credit Suisse has been brought in to administer the sale process of 107 Somerfield stores, according to sources used by the national press.
Today’s Daily Telegraph says bankers at Credit Suisse “have asked for preliminary proposals from potential bidders to be submitted by August 22”. The 107 stores include both freehold and leasehold properties.
The Daily Telegraph claims to have seen the sales memorandum, and that Credit Suisse bankers believe the auction process represents "a unique opportunity to acquire an attractive portfolio of grocery retail stores and to gain scale at a national and/or local level".
The memo also adds that "the transaction [sic] will generally be effected by means of a sale of stores as going concerns, including fixtures and fittings and elements of stock by arrangement", said the newspaper.
The Co-op will work with the Office of Fair Trading to resolve competition issues, and the rumour mill will become more frenzied as the media speculates about which chains will bid for the stores. Three of the top four are said to be sniffing around, with Tesco the exception, while reports have also suggested that discount chains Lidl and Aldi could be interested in taking some of the stores out of Co-op hands.
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