Staples Tries to Buy Office Depot Again, for $2.1 Billion
Update 1/20/21: The offer was rejected by Office Depot according to USA Today. But, Office Depot is open to a alternative deal, including combining their retail operations. I guess this would help navigate the regulatory issues that shut down the purchase attempt in 2016 as well.
Staples and Office Depot are two popular office supplies stores that we often mention here on the site. There are several credit cards that earn bonus points for this category, such as Chase Ink Cash, Chase Ink Plus, Amex SimplyCash Plus and even Amex Business Platinum for a limited time.
Staples has over 1,000 stores in the United States and Canada and Office Depot has over 1,300 locations in North American and Europe. But soon we could see them become just one, even bigger, company.
Staples is once again looking to buy its rival in a $2.1 billion deal. The news comes after the first attempt, almost five years ago, was stopped by the Federal Trade Commission for violating antitrust law. Another attempt was made over two decades ago, in 1997.
Staples offer was $40-per-share, roughly a 60% premium over the closing price for the last 90 trading days. Staples said that the offer is a “compelling value proposition” and is a “superior to the intrinsic, standalone value” of Office Depot, CNN reports.
It is not clear what would happen exactly, if the merger gets approved. Most likely we will not see any immediate changes. But if Office Depot stores are rebranded, we should probably expect fewer of those gift card deal that we usually see from these two companies.
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They just need to try harder – like the Mets’ former GM…they only need to make 62 more overtures. 😉
They should do it and put in a clause to switch to US Bank gift cards instead of Metabank.