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Article: Private equity tilts at Sainsbury. That's good for shareholders, but what about the company? ; OUTLOOK
- Article from:
- The Independent (London, England)
- Article date:
- February 3, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 2007 The Independent - London. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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Shares in J Sainsbury haven't been as high as they got to
yesterday since the tail end of the 1990s. Yet it wasn't the com-
pany's recovery story which finally put them there, but
confirmation, after a week of increasingly fevered speculation, that
a consortium of private-equity players - including CVC, KKR and
Blackstone - might be interested in bidding.
Shareholders are hardly likely to complain about that. Even poor
old Sainsbury's, until recently widely thought of as a dog, is
attracting the attentions of private equity now. Has something
changed, or is private equity just desperate?
The truth is that, as a company, J Sainsbury needs a private-
equity buyout like a hole in the head. ...