It's the acquisition saga that just won't go away.
Roughly one month after ODP Corp. (formerly Office Depot) announced its plan to split the company into two separate businesses — one for its consumer segment and one for its B2B distribution segment — ODP confirmed June 4 that it had received an updated proposal from Staples' parent company in the form of $1 billion for the consumer unit.
ODP said that it had received the proposal from USR Parent, which owns Staples and is a portfolio company of Sycamore Partners. ODP said it is carefully reviewing the proposal alongside its financial and legal advisors (Goldman Sachs & Co. and Thacher & Bartlett LLP, respectively) to "determine the best course of action that it believes is in the best interests of the company and its shareholders."
In mid-March, ODP publicly rejected a $2.1 billion proposal from USR Parent, the Sycamore-affiiated owner of Staples, to buy certain ODP assets, citing a lack of clarity of specifics from Sycamore in its proposal. A couple of weeks later, USR Parent said Staples would evaluate all alternatives in its pursuit of ODP, including, but not limited to, all of ODP or certain select assets, which may include ODP's retail and consumer-facing business, its business operations in Canada and certain other assets. That was the latest publicly-shared development between the two companies until the ODP business separation announcement.
