Private equity firms eye office supply store chain Staples Inc: report

Several private equity firms are weighing plans to submit a takeover offer for Staples Inc, the Nasdaq-listed office supply store chain that has a market value of around $8.2 billion, Fortune yesterday reported, citing unnamed sources.

Among the PE firms interested in Staples is Bain Capital, which helped launch the office superstore 26 years ago.

Discussions currently have been preliminary, and an actual offer could come late this year, the sources told Fortune.

Framingham, Massachusetts-based Staples, which has annual turnover of $25 billion, has lost about half of its market value over the past two years due to the office supply industry facing competition from merchants, drugstores, online stores like Amazon and a slowing US economy.

Staples is the world's largest office products company and has a presence in more than 26 countries throughout North and South America, Europe, Asia and Australia. It also has 90,000 associates worldwide.

It sells office products, furniture, computers, and other supplies through some 2,300 Staples stores worldwide with around 1,915 of its stores located in North America.

In addition to its retail outlets, Staples sells office products via the Internet and through its catalog and direct sales operations, including subsidiary Quill Corp. Staples also provides document management and copying services at its stores and some 25 stand-alone copy and print shops.