London: United Biscuits, the UK maker of McVitie's cookies owned by Blackstone Group and PAI Partners, may be split into snacks and biscuits units that could be sold separately, French buyout firm PAI said.
"This is an option," PAI Chief Executive Officer Lionel Zinsou said in an interview at the end of a conference in Paris on Friday. No decision has been made about a split or when a sale process may start, he said.
"There are snacks companies, large, small, international, there are private equity players and there are biscuit groups" which may be interested, he said, declining to name them. "And there are players that buy both" snacks and cookies.
Blackstone and PAI, which bought United Biscuits in 2006 for $3 billion, (Dh11.01 billion) unsuccessfully held talks in 2010 to sell the whole company to Bright Food Group, Shanghai's biggest food and dairy company. Blackstone and PAI Partners picked Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase to advise on splitting up United Biscuits, the Sunday Times said last August 14.
United Biscuits was founded in 1948 after the merger of two Scottish companies, McVitie & Price and MacFarlane Lang.
