By Sneha Shankar - ONEX Corporation (TO:OCX), a Toronto-based private equity company, will buy out the Swiss packaging company SIG Combibloc Group AG in a deal worth 3.75 billion euros ($4.7 billion), Onex said in a statement on Monday. The transaction is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2015 and the deal would help the Canadian company expand in Europe.
An additional payment of 175 million euros ($217 million) will be paid on the financial performance of SIG in 2015 and 2016, the company statement said. The move comes as Onex, which is Canada's largest buyout firm and opened a credit office in Europe in October, is looking to expand there, Bloomberg reported, adding that the deal will include an equity investment of $1.25 billion by Onex, including from the company’s management team. Earlier, Onex had acquired York Risk Services Group Inc., a risk management company, in a deal worth $1.33 billion.
“SIG’s management team has successfully proven its ability to enter and grow in new markets, while maintaining its standard of excellence in existing markets,” Nigel Wright, a managing director in Onex’s London office, said in the statement.
SIG has 5,200 employees on its payroll and has customers in over 40 countries. The packaging company also has seven production facilities in Europe, South America and Asia Pacific. In 2007, SIG was bought for 2.8 billion Swiss francs ($2.9 billion) by Rank Group, backed by billionaire Graeme Hart. SIG, which began as a railway carmaker in the 1850s, is owned by Reynolds Group Holdings Ltd., a part of the Rank Group, Bloomberg reported.