(Bloomberg)—Peter Buck was a nuclear physicist. Fred DeLuca, a 17-year-old highschool graduate needing a $1,000 mortgage. Collectively, the pair went into the sandwich enterprise collectively. Over the following 5 many years, they went from one retailer in Bridgeport, Connecticut to tens of hundreds of Subway franchises in additional than 100 nations.

Now the chain is probably exploring a sale that would flip their heirs into a few of America’s richest individuals.

A sale might entice private-equity corporations and worth the carefully held enterprise at greater than $10 billion, Bloomberg Information reported Wednesday, although the plans are nonetheless in an early stage. Subway responded that it doesn’t touch upon possession or enterprise plans.

DeLuca, who grew up in New York, was simply a young person when he teamed up with Buck, a household pal, to open a sandwich joint in 1965 to pay for his school tuition. After Subway moved to a franchise mannequin within the Seventies, Buck largely turned a silent co-owner, based on Insider, although he stayed on the board till he stepped down earlier than his demise at age 90 in 2021.

DeLuca remained the corporate’s hands-on entrance man till he died from leukemia in 2015 at 67. His sister, Suzanne Greco, took over from him as chief government officer and retired in 2018. The next 12 months, Buck and the board selected former Burger King CEO John Chidsey to change into the primary outsider to steer the agency, with a objective to reverse declining gross sales and retailer closures.

It’s not clear simply how a lot cash the founders collected from Subway over the many years. Not like many different restaurant chains, Subway by no means went public. Observers solely sometimes might catch glimpses of its funds via stray public filings or choose bits of data printed by the corporate.

However some clues have emerged over time. In a 2017 deposition, a personal banker named Fran Saavedra mentioned DeLuca collected $1 million per day in royalties within the early 2000s, Insider reported.

As to Buck, he had change into one of many largest US landowners by the point of his demise, based on the Land Report. In 2014, he sued the Inner Income Service after the company challenged his gifting of land to his sons at a steep low cost from what he’d paid simply days earlier than, a transfer that lowered his present tax invoice. Buck received the swimsuit.

To contact the writer of this story: Anders Melin in Kuala Lumpur at [email protected]

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