KUWAIT: Kuwait Food Co (Americana) is not aware of any potential stake sale by its majority shareholder, its chairman said yesterday.
Sources said on Thursday that Kuwait’s billionaire Al Kharafi family was looking to sell Americana and had hired bankers to explore a deal. “We don’t know anything about anything on this subject,” Americana Chairman Marzouk Al Kharafi said on the sidelines of an annual general meeting in Kuwait. “This subject is for shareholders,” he added.
Sources had said there was no formal process underway, but the family was working with investment bank Rothschild to approach potential buyers including private equity groups and sovereign wealth funds in the region to explore their interest in the $3.6bn group.
The Kharafi family holds 66.8 percent of Kuwait Food Company through its private investment company MAK (Mohammed Abdulmohsin Al Kharafi & Sons). It sells goods under the brand name Americana. It trades on the Kuwait stock exchange and its $3.63bn market capitalisation makes it the biggest company on the Thomson Reuters Mena Cyclical Consumer Goods and Services Index. The group had sales of $3.1bn in 2013 and profit of $179m, according to its website.
Founded in 1964 in Kuwait, Americana is a publicly traded group, with interests in restaurants and packaged food. The company is a franchise operator of restaurants including KFC and Pizza Hut and Red Lobster and Olive Garden. Americana also manufactures California Garden beans and Farm Frites frozen vegetables.Reuters
