26/11/2018 – Robinsons Retail Holdings Inc, the second largest multi-format retailer in the Philippines has acquired the full ownership of grocery chain operators Rustan’s Supercenters Inc. (RSCI) in a share swap deal with Dairy Farm, an Asian retailer listed in the London Stock Exchange.
Robinsons Retail is owned by the Gokongweis, the second richest family in the Philippines, which owns and operates over 3500 retail formats, including supermarkets, department stores, international fashion and beauty specialty store, specialty coffee shops, and drugstores.
With the transaction valued at PHP18 billion (about US$343 million), Robinsons Retail gained the ownership of RSCI’s business and brands, including Rustan’s supermarket, Marketplace by Rustan’s, Shopwise Hypermarket, Shopwise Express, and Wellcome.
RSCI used to be owned by the Tantoco family, which controls the publicly listed SSI Group, the country’s leading specialty retailer with 683 specialty stores that cover 129,000 square meters as of end-2017. It was in 2012 that Dairy Farm only acquired the remaining half of RSCI from the Tantoco family.
Robinsons Retail’s deal was first announced in March this year and is now completed with the approval of respective boards of the company and Mulgrave Corporation B.V., a wholly-owned member of Dairy Farms International Holdings Ltd Group of Companies.
The Gokongwei family will effectively own 51 percent of the expanded capital of Robinsons Retail Holdings while Dairy Farm, through its arm MCBV, will own 18.25 percent of the listed retail company upon the completion of the secondary sale tranche.
Based on its latest financial report, Robinson’s Retail’s net income attributable to equity holders of the parent company posted a growth of 9.8 percent to PHP3.8 billion (about US$72.4 million) for the first nine months of this year.
