Alimentation Couche-Tard has abandoned its ¥2,600-a-share cash bid for Seven & i Holdings, telling the Japanese retailer’s board that ten months of “obfuscation and delay” left no viable path to a deal. The decision caps a courtship that would have united two of the world’s biggest convenience store operators under the 7-Eleven banner.
In a letter, Couche-Tard founder Alain Bouchard and CEO Alex Miller wrote, “We have been very patient and respectful throughout this process… Yet there has been no sincere or constructive engagement from 7&i.”
The company said its all-cash offer represented a 47.6% premium to Seven & i’s unaffected price and was fully financed.
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Couche-Tard detailed repeated attempts to secure basic financial and operational data. Over ten weeks, it received just fourteen US business files and “none of our critical questions were answered.” Two tightly scripted management meetings yielded “little new information,” undermining confidence in Seven & i’s governance.
Earlier this year to ease antitrust fears, the Québec operator had offered a store divestiture plan backed by a reverse termination fee exceeding US$1.2 billion. It even canvassed potential buyers despite lacking a signed agreement—an unusual step meant to show regulators a clear remedy.
Seven & i, the letter claims, withheld data needed to advance those talks.
Couche-Tard floated alternative structures, including purchasing all non-Japanese assets and 40% of the domestic arm, but said Seven & i’s own counterproposal diluted the premium and threatened “operational prospects of the combined business.”
The retreat removes, for now, what would have been the largest foreign takeover of a Japanese company. It also shifts pressure back onto Seven & i, which faces activist calls to unlock value from its sprawling portfolio.
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