"Oh Thank Heaven? Not for $46 Billion!": Couche-Tard's 7-Eleven Takeover Goes Bust

Canadian convenience store giant Couche-Tard just threw in the towel on their massive $46 billion bid to buy Seven & i Holdings, the folks who own 7-Eleven in Japan. Looks like they won't be getting that Big Gulp of Japanese market share after all!

This was a pretty gutsy move from the start. Let’s face it - 7-Eleven is basically a national treasure in Japan, and this would've been the biggest foreign takeover they'd ever seen. The founding Ito family was so against it that they actually teamed up with their rivals to block the deal. Wild, right?

Couche-Tard's basically pointing fingers at Seven & i's management for being stubborn - guess that 24/7 convenience doesn't extend to business negotiations! But here's the thing - this doesn't really reflect what's happening in Japan's business scene overall. One analyst called Seven & i just "an obstructive character in an ongoing success story." As we have previously reported, activist investors are actually killing it in Japan right now and private equity firms can't hire people fast enough!

Poor Stephen Dacus (Seven & i's new CEO) is now in the hot seat. Their shares dropped 9% when the deal collapsed, so he's scrambling to show they can make it on their own. They're planning to sell their superstore business for $5.4 billion and do a massive share buyback.

Some experts are saying this isn't Japan being all protectionist like in the old days - it's actually Japanese companies getting more confident and competitive.

Looking back, foreign takeovers in Japan have been hit-or-miss. Foxconn managed to snag Sharp back in 2016 after chasing them for years, but others like KKR and Blackstone crashed and burned with Toshiba.

Maybe it was just about the money in the end? $46 billion sounds like a lot, but perhaps not enough for a convenience store empire that's as ubiquitous in Japan as those bright green and red signs lighting up every street corner!

#activism