LBO France gets Materis

LBO France has acquired building materials company Materis in a secondary buyout transaction worth around €1.1bn. The transaction provides an exit for Advent International, The Carlyle Group and CVC Capital Partners, generating a return of over two times the money invested.

The consortium acquired a majority stake of 60% in Materis from Lafarge in January 2001 for €890m.

LBO France, managed by LBO France Gestion, now owns 86% of Materis and Lafarge and management each retain a 7% stake. The investment vehicle managed by LBO France also includes co-investments by Alpha and AGF Private Equity. The closing of the sale is expected end of October further to the clearance of the anti-trust authorities.

Materis has five lines of business; refactory cement (€192m sales in 2002); paints (€313m); brick and tile mortars and adhesives (€338m), aluminates (€220m) and admixtures (€193m). The group operates 60 plants in 29 countries and employs 5,000 people.

Advent International, The Carlyle Group and CVC Capital Partners each held an equal stake in the business. Bertrand Finer, director of CVC, said: “This deal demonstrates another solid return on investment for our portfolio and the partnership of the three private equity firms provided strong financial and management support to the Materis team.”

CVC is an active player in the construction sector, which has provided both new investment opportunities and exits for the firm this year. Recently the firm agreed to sell the distribution and building products operations of Cementbouw Handel & Industrie to buildings materials group CRH in a €646m deal, providing the firm with a partial exit from its 2001 investment in the Dutch group, which it bought out of NBM Amstelland. And earlier this year CVC acquired Danske Traelast, the largest retailer and distributor of building materials in the Nordic region, in a delisting from the Copenhagen stock exchange.