Good bye Australian control of Nick Scali Furniture? CEO Anthony Scali has sold half of his 27% stake for $77.3 million to one of his Chinese suppliers, a move that suggests the days of Scali family control are numbered.

Mr Scali has agreed to sell 11.04 million of his 22.1 million shares to Jason Furniture (Hangzhou) Co Ltd (known as KUKA) for about $7 a share, slashing his stake from 27.2%t to 13.6%.

Investors took this as a negative and sold the shares down 2.3% to $6.80 when they might have been expected to sniff a possible takeover bid for the company from this deal.

Nick Scali has a market value of $568 million, so a bid would have to be pitched north of $600 million or closer to $8 a share to be convincing.

But this is seen as a cosy deal and effectively takes Nick Scali off the possibles and probables list that fee hungry investment bankers keep.

There had been a belief that private equity was sniffing around the Sydney-based furniture retailer.

(Source:sharecafe.com)