The Betaville M&A blog, the Wario to FT Alphaville’s Mario, sent an interesting story to subscribers this morning about UK-listed Pets at Home:
Pets at Home Group, the FTSE 250-listed pet food retailer, is at the centre of takeover rumours.
People following the situation had heard rumours Pets at Home may have attracted takeover interest, possibly from a private equity firm.
Some people following the situation suggested the private equity firm circling Pets at Home may be based in Europe but have a similar business to Pets at Home in the US.
Funnily enough, we’d been hearing similar speculation after an intriguingly named vehicle appeared on the Companies House register: Pug Bidco.
Pug Bidco’s registration doc lists one director, a Michael Chang of 650 Madison Avenue, NYC. The vehicle’s registered address is 40 Portman Square, London. These are both offices of BC Partners, the private equity group.
A person named Michael Chang is a partner at BC Partners. He was part of the team that took private Petsmart, the US pet supplies retailer, in 2015 and bolted on the Chewy pet-food website in 2017.
We have calls in to Pets At Home and BC Partners and will update the story as soon as they respond.