"Goldman Sachs hired to boost Matalan sale process"
MATALAN founder John Hargreaves is reported to have brought investment bank Goldman Sachs to strengthen the process to sell the discount retail chain.
The Skelmersdale-based company, founded by the 65-year-old former market trader, is being sold by corporate financiers from PricewaterhouseCoopers.
A price tag of £1.5bn has been suggested and such a sum would represent a huge windfall for Mr Hargreaves and his family, who took the business private in 2006 in a £817m deal.
There has been some concern in the market place that so far the sale process has lacked focus, and that the some of the obvious private equity bidders such as KKR and Blackstone are not involved in the late stages of the bidding process.
One un-named banker told The Daily Telegraph: “There has been a general dissatisfaction about the process. It has been quite ‘loose’ and not much has been about bank financing.”
Since the credit crunch, big ticket buyouts have been rare, with banks unwilling to lend to support highly leveraged deals.
According to reports TPG, Blackstone, Warburg Pincus, BC Partners and Advent International are the first round bidders in the auction.
Matalan has more than 200 out of town stores nationwide and has performed strongly throughout the recession.
