Dell Family Partnership Buys Wild Oats Bonds

Dell Inc. Chairman Michael Dell acquired 18% of the convertible bonds sold by Wild Oats Markets Inc., one of the nation’s largest chains of natural foods supermarkets.

Wild Oats, based in Boulder, Colo., disclosed in a regulatory filing Friday that a Dell family partnership held $20.5 million of the company’s convertible bonds. The supermarket chain sold $115 million of the bonds in June to buy back stock and finance its expansion.

Dell, who built the company he founded in 1984 into the largest personal computer maker, with a market value of $88 billion, holds investments in Wild Oats with his wife, Susan, through a partnership called MSD Capital. The partnership was co-founded in 1998 by Glenn Fuhrman, a former managing director at Goldman, Sachs & Co., and John Phelan, a former principal at investment firm ESL Partners.

Shares of Wild Oats fell to $8.87 on Aug. 3 from $12.45 after the company announced a decline in second-quarter earnings. The company attributed the earnings drop to factors including costs tied to the opening of a new center for distributing produce to more than half of Wild Oats’ stores.

On Monday, shares of Wild Oats rose 16 cents to $9.16 on Nasdaq.