Advantage Partners poised for Rex Holdings exit

Advantage completed a management buyout of Rex in late 2006, paying JPY45.72 billion (then $396 million). The private equity firm and Tomoyoshi Nishiyama, Rex's president, together owned more than 91% of the company.

Rex operates about 1,200 restaurants, including the Gyukaku barbeque chain and the Doma-Doma izakaya pub chain. Its convenience store business, am/pm Japan, was sold to FamilyMart in 2009 for JPY12 billion while Seijo Ishii, a high-end supermarket operator, was exited to Marunouchi Capital last year.

The divestments were intended to allow Rex to focus on its core restaurant business, but it is said to have struggled in recent years.

Colowide owns a range of restaurant assets, including izakaya pub chains Amataro and Hokkaido, a conveyor belt sushi restaurant chain and a steak restaurant chain. It typically operates several different outlets on a single property.

Private equity firms are seeking exits from investments made during the 2006-2007 period, which saw a number of large leveraged buyouts. With the IPO market still weak, trade sales or secondary exits to other PE players are the most commonly used channels.

Most recently, Unison Capital sold its entire stake in AkindoSushiro, a leading Japanese sushi restaurant chain, to UK-based Permira for $1 billion.

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• Topics
• Exits
• North Asia
• Buyouts
• Consumer
• Advantage Partners
• Japan
• buyout
• Trade sale
• Consumer