Private Equity Likely to Enter C-Stores in a Big Way, for Better or Worse

Dear Client: When we last wrote about the 7-Eleven merger with Circkle K, there was one sentence that has haunted me from that article: "The only thing that could screw this up is if private equity gets involved."  What we meant by that is that we'd rather see the outlets go to regional chains, and perhaps ultimately some still may, but we were acknowledging that in antitrust situations like this, liquidity is the name of the game, and PE provides