At last, a genuine corporate story on a quiet day. Kesa Electricals, the owner of the Comet chain, has just announced it is in talks to sell its French furniture and electricals business, BUT, for €550m.
The potential buyer is a consortium comprising Colony Capital, Goldman Sachs and Merchant Equity Partners. Kesa, whose shares added 3.75p to 226.5p on the news, said the negotiations were likely to take a few months to complete. The process has already taken rather a long time - Kesa said in July it had received a number of approaches for BUT, and investors were beginning to think the sale would never happen.
But the disposal makes sense since it would allow Kesa to concentrate on Comet and its market-leading French electrical chain Darty.
Merchant Equity is paying a little more this time than it did for its last acquisition - the £1 purchase of the MFI chain of furniture stores.
