© Reuters. The brand of Seven & I Holdings is seen at its headquarters in Tokyo, Japan December 6, 2017. REUTERS/Toru Hanai/File Picture
By Scott Murdoch, Abigail Summerville and Rocky Swift
SYDNEY (Reuters) -Japanese retail conglomerate Seven & i Holdings stated on Thursday it has agreed to buy the 7-Eleven comfort retailer chain in Australia for A$1.71 billion ($1.1 billion), additional increasing its possession of the model.
The Australian comfort and petrol retailer, owned by the Withers and Barlow households, kickstarted the method to promote the enterprise – which consists of 751 shops – earlier this yr.
The deal will enable Seven & i to determine “itself because the clear business chief within the Australian comfort retailer market, which has important progress potential,” the Japanese firm stated in an announcement.
It added that it noticed room for additional progress by actively opening new shops in most Australian states.
Seven & i’s company predecessor first licensed the 7-Eleven franchise from U.S.-based Southland Corp in 1973. However the Japanese conglomerate later took over the U.S. firm in 1991 and now controls greater than 80,000 7-Eleven comfort shops across the globe.
Its sprawling retail empire additionally consists of Speedway fuel stations within the U.S. and Ito-Yokado supermarkets in Japan.
The corporate has, nevertheless, come below strain by analysts and buyers to restructure and shed underperforming belongings.
Earlier this yr, Seven & i confronted down a board problem from U.S.-based activist fund ValueAct Capital which had urged the corporate to contemplate a spin-off of the 7-Eleven comfort retailer chain.
Seven & i has since taken some steps to reshape its construction. This yr it closed 14 Ito-Yokado grocery store shops in Japan, exited its attire enterprise, and accomplished a sale of its Sogo & Seibu division retailer unit.
