He begged, he pleaded, he wrote passionate letters asking for Best Buy to let him back in, and now it appears founder and former chairman Richard Schulze is finally getting his way. Or he’s at least going to be allowed to check out the information he needs to make a bid to buy the company.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that it’ll be all green lights on Schulze’s road toward acquiring Best Buy. This just means he’s been given permission to form an investment group and go about doing due diligence. As Reuters reports, this agreement is a nonexclusive deal, one that Schulze says he’s pleased with.

Now that he’s in the door, Shulze will get a gander at Best Buy’s private information in order to get his bid together properly within 60 days. He’s also got a golden ticket to bypass a Minnesota law that says he needs the board’s final approval before he makes a formal bid and doesn’t have to deal with an 18-month standstill period that was included in an earlier deal. Instead, if the board says no, he only has to wait to try again four months later.

This could be bad news for the newly-announced but currently visa-less Hubert Joly, as it’s expected that Schulze would designate his own choice of CEO to helm the struggling company. That’ll be fine for Joly we bet, as he’ll get at least $6.25 million no matter what.

Best Buy agrees to open books to Schulze group [Reuters]

 

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