Chobani founder Hamdi Ulukaya was cleared Friday to freely sell a less than 10 percent stake in the popular yogurt company to TPG Capital, The Post has learned.
Ulukaya got the green light after his ex-wife, Ayse Giray, withdrew her motion to either block or monitor any sale after she received assurances from Chobani’s lawyers on Friday.
Giray had claimed such a sale might infringe on her claim to a 53 percent stake in the Greek yogurt empire.
Chobani is in talks with TPG, a private equity firm, to sell a small piece of the yogurt company, a person with knowledge of the deal told The Post.
The Ulukaya-TPG deal is expected to close shortly, people familiar with the talks said.
Giray and Ulukaya have been locked in a bitter legal battle for two years over her alleged 53 percent stake.
On Thursday, Giray asked a judge to block the stake sale and lobbed a litany of accusations toward Ulukaya, including having allegedly boasted of stealing Chobani’s recipe from Greek yogurt competitor Fage with a bribe to an ex-Fage employee.
Chobani countered Giray’s motion with its argument that it should be free to close the sale because she has not yet proven she owns a stake in the company.
Chobani also claimed that she’s the bad apple — accusing Giray of using a second identity to hide assets from creditors.
On Friday, the two sides met before Judge Saliann Scarpulla in Manhattan state court. At the hearing, Giray agreed to withdraw the motion “based on representations by counsel for Chobani that the transaction would not dilute the 53 percent stake,” Richard Feldman, a lawyer for Giray, told The Post.
In a display of just how nasty the fight has gotten, Chobani fired off a statement saying the judge denied Giray’s motion.
But a representative for the court told The Post that the judge never ruled on the issue.