Praise for its would-be owners leaves the retailer with a possible dilemma if a better cash offer comes in
How much weight does the board of Morrisons truly attach to selling the company only to a “responsible” owner? A lot, one assumes, because the chairman, Andrew Higginson, used three of his four paragraphs of commentary on the Fortress-led consortium’s £6.3bn offer to heap praise on the would-be owners.
Morrisons’ board studied the “overall suitability” of Fortress, the Canadian pension fund CPP and Koch Industries to own “a unique British food-maker and shopkeeper with over 110,000 colleagues and an important role in British production and farming” and decided the combo came up trumps. The bidders had a “full understanding and appreciation of the fundamental character of Morrisons” and had “strong track records and a long-term approach to investing”.
