DLA Piper has advised Nuplex Industries Ltd. on the acquisition of the coating resins division of Bayer MaterialScience AG. The transaction includes the purchase of all shares in Viverso GmbH in Bitterfeld together with all assets belonging to this business in various regions throughout the world. The purchase price is €75 million. Located in Bitterfeld, Germany, the production plant for coating resin products went into operation in 1995 and is one of the most modern in the world. Since 2008, Bayer MaterialScience has had its coating resins business combined in Viverso GmbH.
Headquartered in New Zealand, Nuplex Industries Ltd. is listed on the New Zealand and Australian stock exchanges and with a turnover of NZ$ 1.7 billion, is one of the world’s leading special manufacturers of coating resin products. The Group currently operates in ten countries on four continents and sells its products in more than 80 countries.
“The combination of Viverso with Nuplex’s European operations will result in Nuplex becoming a leading producer of coating resins in Europe. DLA Piper has provided us with outstanding support during this transaction. We were very impressed by DLA Piper’s professional approach paired with their lawyers’ deep knowledge of the German market,” says James Williams, Vice President and General Counsel of Nuplex Industries.
The transaction is subject to merger clearance.
The team of DLA Piper under the leadership of partner Dr Benjamin Parameswaran (Corporate, Hamburg/Cologne) and counsel Dr Isaschar Nicolaysen (Corporate, Hamburg) includes Nuplex client partner Robert Bishop (Corporate, London), as well as partners Dr Jens Kirchner (Employment, Frankfurt), Dr Florian Haase (Tax, Hamburg), Jan Pohle (Intellectual Property & Technology, Cologne), Dr Kai Tumbrägel (Intellectual Property & Technology, Cologne), Dr Ludger Giesberts (Public Commercial Law, Cologne), Carsten Loll (Real Estate, Munich), Dr Daniel H. Sharma (Antitrust, Brussels), Dr Jan Dreyer (Antitrust, Cologne), and the counsels Dr Roland Hens (Corporate, Cologne) and Marcus Kamp (Employment, Cologne). Advising at associate level were Sebastian Decker (Corporate, Hamburg), Nadine Hesser (Employment, Frankfurt), Dr Sascha Morgenroth (Employment, Frankfurt), Dr Christian Kau (Intellectual Property & Technology, Cologne), Saskia Lais (Intellectual Property & Technology, Cologne), Dr Thilo Streit (Public Commercial, Cologne), Dodo Chochitaichvili (Antitrust, Brussels) and Dr Ulrich Bartl (Antitrust, Cologne).
