Sears offers to buy Restoration Hardware

CORTE MADERA, Calif., Nov. 26 (UPI) -- Sears Holdings Corp. proposed buying U.S. furnishings retailer Restoration Hardware Inc. for $6.75 a share, topping by a nickel a bid the chain accepted.

Sears, of Hoffman Estates, Ill., wrote in a Friday letter to a Restoration board committee it was willing, "based on the public information currently available to us," to enter into an acquisition agreement on terms substantially similar to the company's current merger pact, but at a 5-cents-a-share better price.

It requested confidential information that Restoration said in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing it told Sears it was not willing to provide, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Restoration, of Corte Madera, Calif., agreed Nov. 8 to be acquired for $6.70 a share, or about $267 million, by a group that includes Chief Executive Gary Friedman and an affiliate of Greenwich, Conn., private-equity firm Catterton Partners LP.

The Friedman-Catterton offer was 150 percent more than Restoration's prior-day closing price of $2.68 a share.

The retailer is soliciting competing proposals from third parties during a 35-day period that ends Dec. 13.

Restoration and Sears representatives declined to comment.

In late October, Sears -- which operates the Kmart and Sears, Roebuck chains -- offered $4 a share.