London, Oct 4: Imperial Chemical Industries Plc (ICI) of Britain said on Monday that it has agreed to sell its acrylics business for 505 million ($835.8 million) to European chemical company Ineos Acrylics Ltd, the bidding vehicle of chemicals entrepreneur Jim Ratcliffe, backed by Charterhouse Development Capital (CDC).ICI also confirmed that it continues to pursue the sale of its remaining industrial-chemicals businesses.
The proposed deal will be accounted for as an exceptional item in the fourth quarter and is expected to give rise to a pretax profit of around 75 million pounds before the write-off of 25 million of goodwill.
ICI Acrylics, which employs 2,000 people worldwide, is headquarters at Everberg, Belgium, with production sites in Europe, the US and Asia. CDC is the private equity arm of CCF Charterhouse, the French-owned investment bank.
In 1998, ICI Acrylics had sales of 525 million, profit of 31 million and net operating assets of 430 million. Subject to regulatory approval, completion of the transaction is expected in October and it is expected to be broadly earnings neutral for ICI over the next 12 months.
The deal would essentially complete ICI's transformation from bulk chemicals producer to specialty-chemicals company, a process that began in mid-1997.
The deal would be Ratcliffe's largest to date.
The Wall Street Journal
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