By Kukil Bora -
Saint Gobain (PARIS:SGOB), Europe’s biggest supplier of construction materials, said Monday that it planned to buy a controlling stake in Sika (SIX:SIK), a Switzerland-based construction chemicals maker, for about 2.3 billion euros ($2.8 billion).
According to Saint-Gobain, the transaction involves the company’s purchase of Schenker Winkler Holding AG, the owner of 16.1 percent of Sika’s capital and 52.4 percent of its voting rights. The Courbevoie, France-based company also said that it does not plan to acquire Sika’s remaining shares.
“Given the proximity of Sika’s activities with those of Saint-Gobain (Construction Products and Innovative Materials as well as Building Distribution), the deal is expected to generate 100 million euros in synergies as from the second year (2017), and 180 million euros per year as from 2019. The deal will create value by the fourth year,” Saint-Gobain said in a statement, adding that the Sika transaction would have to be cleared by antitrust authorities and could be finalized in the second half of 2015.
However, Sika’s board opposed the transaction in a statement, saying that it “does not support change of control to Saint-Gobain.”
“The Board and Group Management of Sika AG have neither been involved nor consulted in connection with the proposed transaction,” Sika said in a statement. “The Board neither sees the industrial logic in the transaction, nor significant synergies for Sika… the Board and the Group Management believe that shareholder value would be impaired as Sika in the planned set-up would not be able to continue its successful growth strategy.”
On Monday, Saint-Gobain also stated that it was putting its “Verallia” glass packaging unit up for sale. The company completed a $1.7 billion sale of the North American assets of its glass bottle-and-jar unit Verallia to Ardagh Group in the first half of this year, Bloomberg reported.