Verallia sale moved to April

The final closing date for the acquisition of Verallia North America by Ardagh Group has been extended to April 30.
Ardagh announced Monday it is continuing to negotiate a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission that will satisfy the FTC’s antitrust concerns.
The FTC filed an antitrust complaint in July to halt the deal after concluding the resulting company would control too much of the glass container industry in the U.S.
In response, Ardagh had proposed in September selling off some of its glass plants to assure the deal would not be anti-competitive for the glass bottle industry.
In November, Ardagh indicated it hoped the transaction could be completed by mid-January of this year, a full year after it was originally announced.
But Monday, the Luxembourg-based company said that’s not going to happen.
“The settlement negotiations with the FTC are progressing satisfactorily,” Ardagh spokesmen said in a press release. “However, it has not proven possible to conclude these settlement negotiations in time for Ardagh to complete the acquisition of Verallia North America by 13 January 2014.”
Because of the delay, Ardagh will have to make new arrangements to handle the financing. The company issued bonds in January 2013 to finance the acquisition, and those will be repaid in full.
Meanwhile, Ardagh has arranged “committed replacement bridge financing which it expects to refinance in the capital markets in due course.”
Ardagh’s most recent proposal to the FTC in December calls for the company to sell off six former Anchor Glass plants along with the former Anchor headquarters and infrastructure in Tampa, Fla.
It had originally proposed selling four plants to a new, stand-alone operation that would be a competitor.
The locations of the former Anchor Glass plants were not disclosed Monday.
Ardagh Group purchased Anchor Glass Container Corp., which has a plant in Winchester, in July of 2012 for $881 million.
Saint-Gobain, parent company of Verallia North America, accepted an offer one year ago to sell its glass container business to Ardagh for about $1.7 billion.
Verallia’s plant in Dunkirk produces about 2.5 million longneck beer bottles per day and has been the site of major capital investment over the past 15 to 20 years.
Ardagh was founded in Dublin, Ireland, in 1932 as the Irish Glass Bottle Company.
Today it operates more than 100 manufacturing plants in 25 countries, employing about 18,000.
It has annual sales of about $5.4 billion.
Its customers include some already served by the Dunkirk plant, including AB InBev, parent company of Budweiser.[[In-content Ad]]