7-Eleven Taps American Executive to Help Keep It Out of Canadian Hands

Fighting off a takeover by a Canadian rival, the Japanese parent company of 7-Eleven announced a major business shake-up that included the appointment of its first foreign-born chief executive.Seven & i Holdings said on Thursday that Stephen Dacus, 64, a member of the company’s board of directors and longtime retail executive from the United States, will be its next C.E.O.It also said that it is planning to hold an initial public offering of its U.S.

convenience store business, which operates more than 13,000 7-Eleven branches in the country.The moves are the company’s latest attempt to prevent itself from being acquired by the retail group Alimentation Couche-Tard.The Canadian owner of the Circle K convenience store chain has offered around $47 billion for control of Seven & i, the largest-ever foreign-led bid for a Japanese company.Japan’s corporate landscape, which in many ways resisted change for decades, is beginning to shift in the face of an influx of attention from foreign investors.

The reshuffling at Seven & i, whose convenience stores are so ubiquitous in Japan they are considered part of the national infrastructure, is the latest example of that transformation.Activist investors have long pushed Seven & i to spin off its 7-Eleven convenience store business, arguing that the move would improve the sprawling retail group’s valuation and deliver benefits to shareholders.Seven & i also said it would plan to buy back more than $13 billion worth of its shares by fiscal year 2030 to help boost their value.The moves comes as the company’s options for resisting acquisition by Couche-Tard have diminished.

Late last month, a bid from Junro Ito, a son of Seven & i’s founder, to take it private fell apart after he failed to secure the necessary funding.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.If you are in Reader mod...