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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 UK private equity group.
A person named Michael Chang is Partner, Private Equity (North America) 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.
Asked about the speculation, a BC Partners spokesman told FTAV that it was “totally incorrect”, adding: “Pug Bidco is nothing to do with Pets at Home. We are not involved here at all.”
Pets At Home did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
[Updated 11:07 GMT to include BC Partners’ response.]
