As former Fingerhut CEO Ted Deikel positions himself to bid for the Minnetonka catalog, sources speculate that Peter Lytle, managing partner of the Business Development Group, is the one who made the initial bid last week.
“We said there was a bidder on Friday,” said spokesperson Carol Sanger of Fingerhut’s parent Federated Department Stores in Cincinnati. “We are waiting to see if there are others.”
Deikel resigned his post Tuesday as chairman of the Medica Health Plan, in Minnetonka, to pursue the purchase of the Fingerhut, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported Tuesday.
Deikel is a business partner of Minnesota businessman Tom Petters, one of the potential buyers of the beleaguered company. He had run Fingerhut from 1974 to 1984 and again from 1990 to 1999.
Deikel did not return calls by press time.
Lytle is unable to comment on the speculation that he may have placed a big on Fingerhut due to a confidentiality agreement. He is known as a turnaround specialist. In recent years, Lytle and Marshall Masko, senior partner of the Business Development Group, rejuvenated same-day delivery service United Shipping and Technology and KKR Borden Pasta plants.
The Wayzata, MN, investment group grew United Shipping from $1.5 million in sales to $660 million between 1998 and 2000, according to Masko. The Borden Pasta investors “realized about 48 times their investment,” he said.
What would Lytle and Masko do with Fingerhut? “We’ve always said we would purchase the whole company and operate it as an integrated catalog company and re-grow it under many of the tenets that were successful under the old business model,” Masko said.
Any chance Deikel might play a role in a Lytle deal? “I can’t comment on that,” Masko said.
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