Danaher, who makes many Craftsman mechanics tools and owns Gearwrench, Armstrong, Matco, and other tool brands, partnered with Cooper Industries, who owns Crescent, Weller, Apex, and others, to create a joint venture back in March 2010. Earlier this year, March 2012, Danaher and Cooper started looking to sell the jointly owned Apex Tool Group.
It was recently announced that Danaher and Cooper are in final talks to sell the Apex Tool Group to Bain Capital, a private-equity firm, with pricing estimated to be ~$1.5 billion.
Directly Affected Brands
- Airetool
- Allen
- Apex
- Armstrong
- Atkins
- Belzer
- Campbell
- Cleco
- Collins
- Crescent
- Delta Truck Boxes
- Diamond
- DGD
- Dotco
- Erem
- Gearwrench
- H.K. Porter
- Iseli
- Jacobs Chuck
- Jobox
- K-D Tools
- K&F
- Lufkin
- Master Power
- Mayle
- Metronix
- Nicholson
- Plumb
- Quackenbush
- Recoules
- Sata
- Spline Gauges
- Utica
- Weller
- Wiss
- Xcelite
In addition to these Danaher and Cooper-owned brands, the sale will likely affect Craftsman and other 3rd party brands who have strong manufacturing ties to the Tool Group.
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There is no telling what the sale of Apex will have on the affected brands. One thing is clear – if the deal goes through, Bain Capital will want a return on their investment.
Maybe Bain will keep things as they are, but it seems more likely that they will seek to divide the tool group and sell off some of the brands.
Bain Close to Deal to Buy Apex Tool – WSJ
The sale of Apex Tool Group looks to be inevitable. Companies don’t often report that a deal is close until they’ve at least reached the point of dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s.
Apex Tool Group has ~$225 million in annual earnings EBITDA, with estimated valuation of $1.5-1.8 billion.
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Baji
Effectively, this probably means the remainder of Apex tools and Armstrong tools that may be USA made will be last of their kind, as I more or less expecting to see what happened to Irwin. I hope I am wrong, but given that jobs are being outsourced left and right, this wouldn’t shock me.
Stuart
Not necessarily. It will be a year maybe more after the official sale before any changes become apparent.
fred
Some of our favorite brands (Apex, Cleco and Dotco) are part of this list – and most (if not all) of the products we’ve bought from these lines were USA made. I hope that this will continue – but as important is that I hope that quality will not suffer.
Noah
Bain Capital? THE Bain Capital? Oh lord.
Well not like Crescent was making things in the USA anymore anyway….
But Wiss, and Excelite……. I don’t have high hopes for this.
Ken
That’s Mitt Romney’s company I believe.
Barks
That’s a lot of brands for a $1.5B operation, with $225M EBITDA. Say, ~$6.5M per name annually. There will be some culling of these brands.
Chris
Outsourcing the world ! You’ve probably heard of Bain capital due to Mitt Romney, well as GREED runs the global economy, turns out more bottom line deals are sending German companies jobs to Mexico and other “more economical production locations” around the world. So, tool quality diminishes, the big investment firm sells off assets, breaking up / selling off pieces.
Tax payers in affected countries will pick up the bill, by paying the pensions of workers displaced by the poke of an analyst’s smart pad somewhere. Thanks to these players in the new world order job losses in affected countries are growing.