By Kari Williamson
The companies announced a merger agreement in June 2011, whereby Carpenter would acquire Latrobe in a transaction valued at approximately US$558 million.
William A. Wulfsohn, Carpenter’s President & CEO, says: “We will immediately begin to integrate the businesses and focus on leveraging the combined capabilities to increase production capacity and optimise total system costs. A key benefit of this transaction – in combination with our new premium products focus facility in Alabama – will be to substantially increase production to meet strong customer demand for premium products. We still expect the transaction will be accretive to shareholders in the first full year and strongly accretive thereafter.”
As part of the FTC approval, Carpenter entered into a consent decree to transfer assets and technical knowledge to Eramet SA and its subsidiaries, Aubert & Duval and Brown Europe, which will allow them to become a second manufacturer of two specific alloys (MP35N and MP159) in order to provide customers with a supply alternative in the marketplace. MP35N and MP159 are registered trademarks of SPS Technologies, LLC
Carpenter has agreed to transfer or acquire assets worth approximately US$5m as part of the agreement with Eramet, and will record a charge for this liability in the current quarter.