By SIMON HENDERY and NZPA
Senior Blue Star Group managers expect to take eight weeks to settle a deal for a buyout of the Australasian group, which includes the Whitcoulls chain.
The management team has signed an exclusive agreement to negotiate to buy the group's New Zealand and Australian businesses.
The buyout, involving management from both countries, would not affect the businesses' day to day operations, Blue Star finance director David Ballantyne said.
In New Zealand Blue Star owns Whitcoulls, several Bennetts bookstores, the Bennetts tertiary stores and a stake in the Books and More joint venture with New Zealand Post.
"At this stage we don't have any plans to significantly alter the businesses," Mr Ballantyne said.
"The print and retail businesses are good businesses and are performing to plan and we don't expect any major changes in the way they will be managed or operated."
Meanwhile British retailer W H Smith, whose executives met Blue Star late last year to discuss a potential sale, said yesterday that it was still interested in buying the group.
The London Stock Exchange-listed company said: "we remain an interested party and are currently evaluating our options. Talks continue."
W H Smith Retail has more than 1200 stores. It employs 27,500 people in 11 countries and is the number one British book, magazine and home stationery retailer.
Its consumer publishing business, Hodder Headline, is the most profitable publisher in Britain, while W H Smith News is the British market leader in news and magazine distribution.
Blue Star Group's parent, United States Office Products, aimed to get the best price for the businesses.
USOP, which trades on the Nasdaq SmallCap Market, has filed to protect itself from bankruptcy and intends selling several of its big businesses. Yesterday its shares closed down 29 per cent, at US3.2c (7.4c). Blue Star chief executive Tom Sturgess said the group was independent of its US parent and had no responsibility for its liabilities.
The group's book retailing division, which includes 64 Whitcoulls stores in New Zealand and 173 Angus and Robertson book stores in Australia (of which 65 are franchised), brought in nearly $400 million of sales a year. There were $100 million more of sales from the franchised stores.
The commercial printing division, the biggest in New Zealand and one of the biggest in Australia, achieved nearly $300 million of sales a year, Mr Ballantyne said.
Whitcoulls was originally Whitcombe and Tombs that was sold to entrepreneur Graeme Hart in the early 1990s and then later became part of the Blue Star Group, formed by high-flyer Eric Watson.
Mr Watson sold the group in a shares and cash deal to USOP in 1996.
Senior Blue Star managers work on deal to buy group
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