Platform Offers $2.3 Billion for Alent

Private equity investor Platform Specialty Products has offered around $2.3 billion, including debt, for all shares of UK-based Alent, a manufacturer of electronic chemicals specialty surface coatings.

Principal shareholder of Alent is private equity investor Cevian Capital with just under 22%. Commentators said the takeover was a deal waiting to happen after Cevian pushed for the company’s carve-out from Cookson Group in 2012.

The takeover will allow Platform, owned by activist investors Martin Franklin, Bill Ackman and Nicolas Berggruen to merge its MacDermid unit, acquired for $1.8 billion in 2013, with Alent’s Enthone. Both make protective surface coatings for automotive and aircraft applications.

Platform, which is paying 13.9 times Alent’s EBITDA, said it expects annual pretax cost savings of at least $50 million through the integration. The investment group is said to be betting on demand for increasingly compact technology to fit in mobile phones and the addition of more electronics such as sensors in cars.

The current deal represents another step toward consolidation in the market for electronic chemicals, seen to be growing at twice the pace of the automotive industry. In 2013, Merck KGaA bought AZ Electronic Materials for $2.8 billion, and Entegri bought ATMI for $952 million.

Earlier this year, Platform agreed to acquire the electronic chemical and photomasks businesses of OM Group for $365 million.