Private equity funds try to steal Italy’s Unieuro electronics apparel retail chain to the Stock Exchange. Following a classical dual-track procedure, advisors Banca Imi and Unicredit received interestes from some funds and are going to select formal bids by tomorrow, Il Sole 24Ore newspaper wrote yesterday.
It is reasonable to expect then the ipo project is goin to wait for some years (see here a previous post by BeBeez). At the beginning of April Giancarlo Nicosanti, actually said he gave mandate to the two banks in order to organize the ipo process while the listing project had been already anticipated by Nicosanti himself to MF-Milano Finanza in June 2014 when he said that the listing would have happened in two years’ time.
Ardian is said to be one of the most active private equity firms on the deal, after having been involved in a previous auction organized by Mediobanca about 3 years ago which had been stopped later,
Unieuro has today more than 400 shops and has consolidated revenues for about 1.4 billion euros and an ebitda of 60 million euros (financial year ends in Febraury) , which is said to mean an enterprise value of about 300 million euros,
Unieuro is the result of the integration of Marco Polo Expert chain and Unieuro chain. The former has been controlled by Sgm Distribuzione srl, which in turn was controlled through Venice holdings, by private equity firm Rhone Capital and by the Silvestrini family.
In October 2013 British consumer retail giant Dixons Retail announced a deal bringing its Unieuro retail chain and Marco Polo Expert under a unique control (download here the press release). More in detail, both Unieuro spa and Sgm Distribuzione srl had been sold to the newco Italian Electronics Holdings srl. The latter is controlled with an 85% stake by Venice holdings (83% Rhone Capital, 10% Silvestrini family, 1.68% ceo Nicosanti and the rest other managers) and partecipated with a 15% stake by Dixons.
