Tokyo (Reuters)-Seven & I Holdings, owner of local stores 7-Eleven, appointed its first foreign president and director president, and entrusted him with reorganizing his activities in order to postpone a public foreign purchase offer and ensure his recovery.
The main external director Stephen Dacus, who directed Seiyu Holdings and occupied posts at Fast Retailing and Food & Life Companies, will succeed Ryuichi Isaka as CEO on May 27, the group said.
Stephen Dacus, an external administrator since 2022, directs a special committee responsible for assessing the public purchasing offer of the Canadian Coard-Tard Food Food, for $ 47 billion, as well as a privatization offer launched by the founding family of Seven & I and finally abandoned.
Addressing journalists in Japanese and English, Stephen Dacus said that discussions with Couche-Tard continue, but that important regulatory obstacles remain.
“I do not think that our shareholders want us to spend more than two years in uncertainty and that this merger is rejected by the American courts,” he said.
The Seven & I group, which operates more than 80,000 7-Eleven stores in 20 countries and regions, also said that it agreed to sell its capital supermarket unit for 814.7 billion yen (5.10 billion euros) and that it would sell its participation in Seven Bank to bring it below 40%.
In addition, the retail conglomerate will buy around 2,000 billion in action by the 2030 financial year and plans to introduce its North American subsidiary of local stores by the second half of 2026.
(Ritsuko Shimizu and Rocky Swift, Elena Smirnova, edited by Augustin Turpin)
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