Company that owns Swiss Chalet, Harvey’s and The Keg gets $1.2B takeover offer | CBC News

Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd. has proposed taking private Recipe Unlimited Corp., the owner of restaurants including Swiss Chalet, Harvey’s and The Keg.

The deal would value Canada’s oldest and largest full-service restaurant chain at about $1.2 billion.

Recipe Unlimited has more than 1,200 restaurants across Canada, operating under 20 different brand names including Swiss Chalet, Harvey’s, St-Hubert, The Keg, Montana’s, Kelseys, East Side Mario’s, New York Fries, Bier Markt, Elephant & Castle, The Burger’s Priest, The Pickle Barrel, and others.

Fairfax is already the controlling shareholder of Recipe Unlimited, with about 23 per cent of the shares. It is offering $20.73 cash per share for the shares it doesn’t own.

The offer price represents a 53.4 per cent premium to Recipe Unlimited’s closing price on Aug. 8, 2022, according to a statement.

The deal requires the approval of most of the minority shareholders and Recipe Unlimited says its board intends to recommend that shareholders vote in favour of the proposed transaction at a special meeting of shareholders to be held on the matter.

Restaurants were hit hard by the pandemic, but according to CIBC analyst John Zamparo, who covers the company, it its most recently completed quarter same-restaurant sales across Recipe Unlimited locations were 4 per cent above where they were in the same period in 2019. And the company plans to open 30 new restaurants this year, and renovate another 40.