Best Buy Founder Won’t Be Buying Company Back

Yesterday was the deadline for Best Buy founder Richard Schulze to convince the company’s board to consider his deal to buy the retailer back from shareholders, and according to reports, Best Buy will be moving on without Schulze, for now at least.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reports that Schulze never presented a formal bid before the deadline, opting instead to try to negotiate, along with some of his financial backers, an offer that would give them a larger share of the company.

The Wall Street Journal writes that the offers from these private equity firms were for amounts ranging somewhere between $400-700 million dollars and would have given these investors three seats on the board of directors. These offers were denied.

Additionally, Schulze was unable to regain a position for himself on the company’s board of directors. He had stepped down in 2012 as Chairman of the company he founded before attempting to wrest the business back from investors. He does, however, still have the authority as the company’s largest shareholder with a 20% ownership stake, to nominate three candidates for the board of directors, out of which the company will select two.

One source tells the Star-Tribune that Schulze may make another go at buying the company or retaking his seat on the board, telling the paper that, “The journey is still starting.”

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