Morrisons paid £182m to buy McColl’s

Morrisons paid the equivalent of £182m to take over McColl’s and its 1,200 stores after waiving its debt. The supermarket chain edged out a rival proposal from EG Group by promising more cash for unsecured creditors and leveraging its position as the convenience store chain’s main supplier. The failed company had an equity value of just £3m by the time its shares were suspended on 6 May, but senior creditors were owed £160m, according to regulatory documents produced by administrators at PwC. EG Group offered “materially” more cash than Morrisons, but the latter’s proposal not to make any claim against its own unsecured debt of roughly £130m meant that distributions to other unsecured creditors were “estimated to be up to 50% higher” than under the EG Group offer. The FT (£)