Family Dollar Shareholders Approve $8.5 Billion Deal With Dollar Tree

22/01/2015
The dollar store wars have ended.
Shareholders in Family Dollar voted on Thursday to approve the retailer’s $8.5 billion merger with Dollar Tree, leaving the company’s unwanted suitor, Dollar General, on the losing side.
About 74 percent of all Family Dollar shares — and 89 percent of all shares voted on Thursday — were cast in favor of the transaction, the company said in a statement.

“We are pleased with the outcome of today’s vote, and I want to thank Family Dollar stockholders for their support throughout this process,” said Howard R. Levine, the chairman and chief executive of Family Dollar.
The vote, reached quietly at Family Dollar’s headquarters outside Charlotte, N.C., came after months of jockeying between three of the biggest names in the very-low-cost retail world.
Family Dollar first agreed last summer to merge with Dollar Tree, with the aim of creating a retailer with more than 13,000 stores and annual revenue above $18 billion. But the move prompted an aggressive response by the much bigger Dollar General with what ultimately became a $9.1 billion hostile bid.
Uncertainty over whether the higher takeover bid would pass regulatory muster eventually sank Dollar General’s chances. Family Dollar argued that any deal with its bigger competitor would require divesting 3,500 to 4,500 stores, an assessment with which Dollar General disagreed.
Still, earlier this month Dollar General conceded that its only path to success would be to sue the Federal Trade Commission over what it argued was an improper way of determining how many stores would need to be sold off as part of any merger.
Prominent shareholder advisory firms, including Institutional Shareholder Services, ultimately urged investors in Family Dollar to support the lower takeover bid, arguing that the certainty of closing the Dollar Tree deal outweighed the higher price of the other bid.
In a statement after the vote, Dollar General maintained that its proposed combination with Family Dollar was the right one, and bemoaned what it said was a lack of engagement from its takeover target.
“Today’s vote is a loss not only for Family Dollar shareholders, but also for consumers across the country who will not have the opportunity to benefit from the cost savings and efficiencies that we believe would have been created by a merger between Dollar General and Family Dollar,” said Richard Dreiling, Dollar General’s chairman and chief executive.

Fonte:http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2015/01/22/family-dollar-shareholders-approve-8-5-billion-deal/?_r=1

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