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KKRSNAPSUP CHEMICAL UNITS Investment firm's buy of four businesses will create large specialties player
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RIVATE EQUITY INVESTOR
Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., majority owner of Rockwood Specialties Group, is backing Rockwood's acquisition of four Dynamit Nobel chemical businesses forroughly $2.7billion. KKR won out over competing bids from a variety of private in vestors and chemical companies. The Dynamit Nobel business es, which are now owned by M G Technologies, had sales last year of $1.8 billion. The amalgamated total will be more than triple Rockwood's current annual sales of some $800 million. The four units are CeramTec, which makes advanced ceramics; Chemetall, producer of surface treatment and lithium chemicals; Sachtleben Chemie, manufac turer of titanium dioxide, func tional additives, and water treat ment products; and the DNES Custom Synthesis business. ForMGlechnologies, the deal is a giant step toward exiting the chemical industry according to Chairman Udo G. Stark. It still has two units to shed: plastics for the automotive industry and chemicals distributor Solvadis. M G agreed to the deal with Rockwood, Stark says, because "the combination of Dynamit Nobel and Rockwood will create aglobal leader in specialty chem icals and advanced materials." Rockwood itself was created in 2000, when KKR bought a set of businesses from Laporte, pri or to that company's acquisition by Degussa. Rockwood focuses on specialty chemicals for pig ments, wood surface treatment, water treatment, clay electron ics, and advanced materials. It HTTP://WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG
currently operates 40 facilities in North America, Europe, and Asia with a workforce of 2,500. Rockwood CEO Seifi Ghasemi says that with the Dynamit Nobel businesses, "we will create a strong, profitable, and global specialty chemicals and advanced materials company" Reaching a critical mass in spe cialty chemicals is agoal ofthe deal, agrees Todd Fisher, partner and managing director at KKR. "We have been highly supportive of Rockwood to date and look for ward to supporting the combined company to become aworldleader in quality and innovation in the chemical industry" Fisher says. T h e purchase continues a spate of chemical acquisitions by private investors, who see an op portunity in companies that the stock market doesn't value high ly. Blackstone Group just won
MEDICINAL
shareholder approval for its $3.8 billion purchase of Celanese. And chemical companies bought last year by private investors include Ondeo Nalco, SigmaKalon, and Kraton Polymers. K K R already owns Borden Chemical, the Columbus, Ohiobased adhesives resins maker. KKR's effort to build Rockwood into a sizeable specialties player is reminiscent of the work by Scan dinavian venture capital fund Industri Kapital, which cobbled to gether Finnish specialty chemicals company Dynea. However, the fund's subsequent efforts to create a Nordic specialties giant through a merger of Dynea with Kemira were unsuccessful.—PATRICIA
ULTRAPURE Dynamit Nobel specializes in pro duction of advanced ceramic materials.
SHORT
CHEMISTRY
Curry Compound Shows Promise As Drug here's more good news about curry. er reaches the cell surface to perform its usual According to a new report, curcufunction. min—an anticancer compound Yale professor Michael J. Caplan and col (C&EN, Sept. 1,2003, page 8) that is leagues found that when they feed cur a major constituent of the spice C H Q cumin to mice with the AF508 mutation, turmeric—may offer promise for the misfolded protein appears to evade treating cystic fibrosis. excision and goes on to perform its n o r m a l function in the cells that line In the study, researchers at Yale Univer the rodent's nose and rectum. Capsity School of Medicine and the University of lan's group cautions that their suc Toronto found that in mice, curcumin can cor cess in treating mice does not guaran rect a defect that commonly causes cystic fi tee that curcumin w i l l be effective in brosis [Science, 304, 600 (2004)]. That humans. The group is optimistic, how defect, a mutation in the gene ever, because studies have shown that AF508, results in a misfolded pro- CH30 people can consume large amounts of tein. The misfolded protein gets curcumin without apparent toxicity.— removed by the cell's "quality conHO BETHANY HALFORD t r o l " mechanisms and therefore nevCurcumin
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