The future of supermarket chain Morrisons will be decided at the weekend after the Stock Market’s Takeover Panel launched an auction process for the firm.
Consortia led by private equity houses Fortress and Clayton, Dubilier & Rice (CD&R) are both bidding to take over the Bradford-based company, one of the 海角视频’s ‘Big Four’ of supermarket chains.
Both companies have declined to say that their bids are final, so now the process will go to an auction on Saturday which will run for a maximum of five rounds.
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Each round of the process will give the bidders the chance to increase their offers or withdraw from the sale.
The takeover process started in June with CD&R making a £5.5bn bid for the business. This was followed by a bid of £6.7bn by Fortress and a counter bid of £7 billion from CD&R.
Morrisons was founded in 1899 by Bradford egg and butter merchant William Morrison. It was built up from a collection of market stalls to be a major player in the North by Sir Ken Morrison after he took charge of the company in the 1950s, floating on the Stock Exchange in 1967.
The company became a truly national player when it bought most of the Safeway chain in 2004, and now has around 500 stores serving 11m people each week.
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Earlier this month, Morrisons posted a 43% fall in statutory pre-tax profits to £82m for the six months to August 1, down from £145m a year ago.
Underlying pre-tax profits fell 37% to £105m, with the group blaming a hit from £41m in pandemic-related costs, as well as £80m in lost profit across its cafes, petrol forecourts and food-to-go.
The company also warned of price inflation as the shortage of HGV drivers drove up commodity costs.