Japan’s Seven & i Holdings is considering selling down part of its holding in Seven Bank to show it is willing to focus on its core convenience store business, Bloomberg reported on Thursday, citing people with knowledge of the matter.
If the stake were sold down, the group’s banking arm would no longer be counted as a consolidated subsidiary, Bloomberg reported.
The parent company of the 7-Eleven convenience store chain has been under pressure from activist investor ValueAct Capital in recent years to improve its asset allocation and has sold down its stakes in other lower-performing assets.
Last month, the group rejected an offer from Canada’s Alimentation Couche-Tard that would have been the largest corporate foreign buyout of a Japanese company.
Reuters