Doughty Hanson Snags Big LBO Public Listing –

Doughty Hanson, the U.K.-based buyout firm, has floated Geberit on the Swiss stock exchange. Shares in Geberit, Europe’s largest sanitary installation systems company, closed at Sfr375 ($243.75) on their first day of trading, after the IPO price was set at Sfr330 per share.

Doughty Hanson claims the float is the largest initial public offering of a European leveraged buyout by issue size and by enterprise value. In total 2,475,500 primary and secondary shares were issued, equivalent to Sfr817 million ($531.05 million) at the issue price. The offer, oversubscribed by three times, gives Geberit an enterprise value of Sfr2.16 billion ($1.404 billion).

Geberit was acquired by Doughty Hanson in March 1997 in a Sfr1.8 billion deal which saw one of the first non-U.S. dollar denominated high-yield financings in Europe. Post-IPO, Doughty Hanson’s stake will be diluted to 10.3%, which is equivalent to Sfr142 million at the issue price.

Doughty Hanson recently agreed to what it claims will be the largest purchase of a U.S. company by a U.K. buyout firm through its acquisition of an 80% stake in Knowles Electronics for $530 million (see story, p. 14).