Sales day for Carlyle shares in Axalta
The offer of Carlyle Group’s shares in Axalta Coatings Systems is expected to end today. Axalta announced last week Carlyle was selling its 41,621,996 common shares in the company, which equates to about a 17% stake.
Axalta will not receive any of the proceeds of the share offering, and following the sale Carlyle Group will not own any of Axalta’s common shares and will no longer have the right to designate members to Axalta’s board of directors.
Meanwhile, Axalta has also recently announced it has acquired Geeraets Autolak, a distributor of its Cromax refinish coating products in the Netherlands for nearly 40 years. Geeraets Autolak will be integrated into the Axalta organization, operating under the Cromax name. The acquisition takes effect immediately. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
It seems likely further acquisitions will follow. Celebrating the company’s 150th anniversary in June, company chairman and CEO Charlie Shaber said Axalta was looking to introduce and globalise a few new brands via acquisitions.
He said, ‘We did four last year. We’re on target to do four or five again this year so we’ll see quite a lot of activity in the second half of the year.’
