Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC has joined the Fortress-led private equity consortium making a recommended offer for the British supermarket group Morrisons, the companies said on Wednesday.

Britain’s fourth-largest supermarket has agreed to a takeover led by SoftBank-owned Fortress Investment Group, valuing it at 6.3 billion pounds (US$8.8 billion). Two other private equity groups, CD&R and Apollo, have also shown interest.

However the Fortress-led group may still have more work to do after Morrisons’ biggest shareholder, Silchester, said on Tuesday it was not inclined to support the deal because there was little in the offer that could not be achieved as a listed company.

Silchester owns a 15.14-per-cent stake in Morrisons. The offer agreement includes a scheme of arrangement with a 75 per cent hurdle for shareholder acceptance and squeeze out.

GIC holds around 0.21 per cent of the issued share capital of Morrisons.

Earlier this week, GIC was confirmed as buying a 32.5-per-cent stake in Starbucks South Korea business from Starbucks’ US.