The consortium of small supermarket chains that was part of the bid for the Mega chain organized by Shalom Simhon plans to renew its bid without Simhon and his partners, "Globes" has learned. The consortium will offer the same sum, NIS 160 million for 90 of Mega's 127 "Mega in the City" branches.
A law firm to represent the consortium will be selected this morning.
Yesterday, Simhon notified the Mega trustees that he was withdrawing from the race to buy Mega because his consortium could not agree on buying all the branches and because of the opposition of Mega's workers.
The renewed bid will be submitted in the names of the same store chains, which are Victory, which seeks to buy nineteen Mega branches, Mahsanei Lahav, which wants fourteen branches, Mahsanei Hashuk, which wants ten branches, Yohananof, which wants six branches, Super Dosh, which wants five branches, and others.
Victory CEO Eyal Ravid, who is also one of Victory's controlling shareholders, confirmed the renewed bid to "Globes". "Shalom Simhon was on the receiving end of a few shouts form Histadrut chairman Avi Nissenkorn and went into reverse," Ravid said, "I can understand him. He's a Labor Party guy who thought he would come along and it would all be over in a flash. He thought he would come to an understanding with Nissenkorn. Simhon chose to do things through the media and not through meetings. That's fine, only he should have started with meetings. Now, I presume that we'll approach the negotiations as we planned to do, with all the parties, the trustees, the owners of the properties, and the workers as well. I don't think that the workers' conditions will be worsened in any way, just as they have not been worsened so far."
Do you understand the trustees' insistence on selling Mega as a single entity?
"They're not keen on the proposal to split up the chain because if I understand rightly they have a commitment to the Histadrut, but I don’t recall that the court appointed four trustees. It appointed three, and the Histadrut isn't one of them. They don’t want to sell Mega piecemeal, but that would be much better for the economy than the alternative of selling to one buyer. Apart from the fact that the market doesn't need all 127 branches and the sky won't fall if 35-40 stores are discarded, we have in any case promised to take on all the workers employed in the branches likely to be closed."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on March 14, 2016
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2016