Metropoulos, Apollo Team For Hostess

The new owner of Hostess Brands Inc.’s snack cakes hopes to have Twinkies back on U.S. store shelves by this summer, according to a member of the purchasing group.

“Our family is thrilled to have the opportunity to reestablish these iconic brands with new creative marketing ideas and renewed sales efforts and investment,” Daren Metropoulos, a principal at his family’s private equity firm, C. Dean Metropoulos & Co., told sister news service Reuters in an e-mail message. “We look forward to having America’s favorite snacks back on the shelf by this summer.”

Daren’s father, Dean Metropoulos, teamed up with Apollo Global Management to offer $410 million for Twinkies and other snack cakes as part of a bankruptcy auction. Their offer was to serve as the minimum offer for the business but no other bidders emerged. The sale of assets, which range from Twinkies and Wonder Bread to real estate and baking equipment, was run by Perella Weinberg Partners.

Hostess did manage to find a strategic buyer for one of its brands. Its Drake’s snack cake business will be acquired by McKee Foods Corp., which had submitted a baseline bid of $27.5 million earlier this year. Hostess, the maker of such iconic goods as Drake’s, Twinkies and Wonder Bread, is liquidating after filing for bankruptcy last year, its second since 2004.

An auction for Drake’s was canceled after no other qualified bids were submitted. McKee was the only qualified bidder to step up by the deadline, according to a Hostess statement.

Martinne Geller is a correspondent for Reuters in New York. Additional reporting by Nick Brown.