Dollar General Ups The Ante for Family Dollar

Another bidder has stepped into the ring to scoop up discount merchant Family Dollar.

Dollar General is offering $8.9 billion, beating out it’s current offer of $8.5 billion from Dollar Tree.  Family  investors, led by Carl Icahn had been quietly pursing a possible merger since March and announced the $8.5 million sale in early June.

Richard W. Dreiling, Dollar General’s chairman and chief executive, has long thought a merger between the two companies (Dollar General and Family Dollar) was the right move, but was unable to make substantive merger talks come together earlier in the year, according to The New York Times. Dreiling had all but decided to retire when the news of the merger of his rivals broke—a move with effected him like “a shot of adrenaline” and prompted him to make a counter offer.

Dreiling has deferred his retirement for a year.

Apart from the $8.9 billion, Dollar General has also offered to pay the $305 million breakup fee that would be owed to Dollar Tree if its deal with Family Dollar were to fall apart.

Carl Icahn has been critical of Family’s Dollar’s board—accusing them of attempting to protect the CEO by not fully exploring their sale options.

“How far will crony boards go (and get away with it legally) to protect the C.E.O. at the expense of shareholders?” he wrote in a blog post on Monday.

If the merger goes through, the combined chain would have 20,000 locations and $28 billion in revenue.