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đź”´ PRIVATE EQUITY OWNED
Staples
office supplies · Framingham, MA
PE Firm
Sycamore Partners
Year Acquired
2017
“Sycamore bought it for $6.9B, paid itself a $1 billion dividend, then closed a third of the stores.”
The PE Playbook
- •Sycamore Partners paid itself a $1B dividend in 2019 — recouping ~80% of initial equity while pushing total debt past $5.3B
- •Closed over 100 stores and laid off 7,000+ workers after the 2017 acquisition
- •Racked up eight wage-and-hour and health-and-safety violations under PE ownership
- •Shifted strategy away from retail consumers toward B2B, abandoning the customers who built the brand
Since the Acquisition
- â–¸After buying Staples for $6.9 billion, Sycamore Partners paid itself a $1 billion dividend, then closed over 100 stores and laid off 7,000+ workers
- â–¸177 IT employees laid off within four months of the acquisition closing
- â–¸Roughly one-third of all U.S. Staples stores shuttered under Sycamore's ownership