Euro Garages’ parent company EG Group has stepped up its interest in fuel retailer and refiner Caltex Australia with a bid for the firm, rivaling Canada’s Alimentation Couche-Tard’s A$8.8bn (£4.5bn) offer.
EG Group offered A$3.9b (£2bn) in cash for Caltex’s convenience store business and separate shares in a new, listed infrastructure and refinery company made up of Caltex’s remaining assets.
EG Group’s offer follows a revised A$8.8bn cash bid last week from Couche-Tard, which made a bid of A$8.6bn in November.
EG Group already has a presence in Australia having last April completed the A$1.725bn (£910m) acquisition of Woolworth’s petrol business – a network of 540 sites.
Analysts said EG Group might run into issues with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, because it is among the top four petrol retailers in the country and would be bidding for a network that accounts for around 16% of petrol retail sales.
The 380 Euro Garages sites in the UK are part of an international portfolio of more than 5,600 EG Group sites in Europe, Australia and the US, where it has just shy of 1,700 sites.
Alimentation Couche-Tard has a presence in the UK and Irish Republic through its 410 Circle K sites.
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