American Greetings Corp, yesterday said that it has received a $580-million takeover offer from a group led by its chief executive, valuing the world's largest publicly-traded greeting card company at about $580 million.

Cleveland, Ohio-based American Greetings has received the offer from Zev Weiss, its CEO, and Jeffrey Weiss, its president and COO and other members of the Weiss family have offered $17.18 for shares they do not already own, a 20-per cent premium to the Class A stock's 25 September closing price.

Based on the company's approximately 33.8 million outstanding shares, the offer values American Greetings at around $580 million.

The company, whose brands also include Carlton Cards and Recycled Paper Greetings, said that its board will form a special committee of independent directors to consider the proposal and will be authorised to retain independent financial advisors and legal counsel to assist it in its work. 

Founded in 1906 by Polish immigrant Jacob Sapirstein, who started selling cards from a horse-drawn cart, American Greetings now has an annual turnover of around $1.7 billion.

The company's major greeting card brands are American Greetings, Gibson and Papyrus, and other paper product offerings include DesignWare party goods and American Greetings and Plus Mark gift-packaging and boxed cards. 

American Greetings also has one of the largest collections of greetings on the Web, including greeting cards available at Cardstore.com and electronic greeting cards available at AmericanGreetings.com. 

In addition to its product lines, American Greetings creates and licenses popular character brands through the American Greetings Properties group. 

In June, American Greetings acquired UK's bankrupt Clinton Card stores along with the namesake brand and 400 stores.

Clinton Card is one of American Greeting's biggest customers, and by snapping up Clinton's £35 million bank debt, American Greetings became a preferential creditor giving it a strong position in buying the Loughton, Essex-based company.