Bain sale coated with €2.2bn

US private equity firm Bain Capital has sold Dutch industrial coatings maker SigmaKalon Group to PPG Industries, a US supplier of paints, chemicals and other specialty materials, for €2.2bn.

Bain put the business up for sale in the spring, hiring and HSBC to run an auction, and PPG beat off competition to win in July. Headquartered in Uithoorn, Netherlands, SigmaKalon, is the second largest supplier of coatings in Europe. It employs around 10,000 people in over 40 countries, and in 2006 recorded a turnover of approximately €1.9bn.

Bain paid around €1bn in March 2003 from French oil and gas giant TotalFinaElf (now called Total). “SigmaKalon has very successfully developed over the last four years into a best-in-class global coatings company, and we believe the combination with PPG will allow the company to continue – and in some areas accelerate – its successful strategy,” added Walid Sarkis, a managing director at Bain Capital based in London.

PPG sees SigmaKalon as a way of expanding its European business. At the time the Pittsburgh headquartered announced it had tabled a bid for the company, Charles E. Bunch, chairman and chief executive officer, said: “It would give us an excellent footprint in the European architectural coatings segment, where today we have very nominal participation. This acquisition would give us a more balanced coatings business in Europe, approximately doubling our European sales, and expand our global coatings portfolio by more than 40%.”