* CD&R has approached Morrisons board - Sky News
* Former Tesco CEO Terry Leahy is CD&R senior adviser
* Former Tesco executives now run Morrisons
* Morrisons partner Amazon has been linked with bid in past
LONDON, June 19 (Reuters) - Britain's Morrisons
declined comment on Saturday after a report that private equity
firm Clayton Dubilier & Rice (CD&R) has made a preliminary bid
approach to the supermarket group's board that could value it at
5.5 billion pounds ($7.59 billion).
A spokesperson for Morrisons, based in Bradford, northern
England, had no comment on the Sky News report. A spokesperson
for CD&R also had no comment.
Morrisons is Britain's fourth-largest grocer by sales,
trailing market leader Tesco, Sainsbury's and
Asda.
Shares in Morrisons, down 3% over the last year, closed
Friday at 182 pence, valuing the group at 4.33 billion pounds.
Sky News reported CD&R has begun approaching banks about
financing a potential bid for Morrisons in recent days.
It said a bid could involve Terry Leahy, the former Tesco
CEO who is a senior adviser to CD&R.
When at Tesco, Leahy was the boss of Andrew Higginson and
David Potts, who are now Morrisons' chairman and CEO
respectively.
A bid for Morrisons would follow Walmart's recent
sale of a majority stake in Asda to the Issa brothers and
private equity firm TDR Capital.
That deal valued Asda at 6.8 billion pounds and followed
Sainsbury's failure to takeover Asda after an agreed deal was
blocked by Britain's competition regulator in 2019.
Morrisons has a partnership agreement with Amazon
and there has been persistent speculation that it could emerge
as a possible bidder.
($1 = 0.7242 pounds)
(Reporting by James Davey; Editing by Christina Fincher)
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