Tycoon Savitri Jindal's JSW Paints To Buy Akzo Nobel's India Business In $1.6 Billion Deal
Buckets of Dulux branded paint sit stacked on a pallet at an Akzo Nobel India Ltd. paint factory in ... More Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, India, on Thursday, June 1, 2017. Photographer: Udit Kulshrestha/Bloomberg
JSW Paints—backed by tycoon Savitri Jindal and her family—has agreed to buy a majority stake in Akzo Nobel's India business in a deal valued at €1.4 billion ($1.6 billion), including debt, doubling down on the industry despite intensifying competition.
Under the deal, Amsterdam-based Akzo Nobel will receive €900 million cash from the sale, while the rest of the proceeds will be used to pay down debts, according to a joint statement released on Friday.
'With JSW, we are confident the business is in the hands of a long-term partner with deep local expertise and strong ambitions in the sector,' Greg Poux-Guillaume, CEO of Akzo Nobel said in the statement.
The deal is subject to regulatory approval. JSW will also need to make a mandatory tender offer for the remaining shares in Akzo Nobel India, the maker of Dulux paints.
'We aspire to build the paint company of the future,' Parth Jindal, managing director of JSW Paints, said in the statement. 'With the Magic of Dulux and Thoughtfulness of JSW Paints, we look forward to delighting customers and building lasting value for our stakeholders'.
JSW Paint is expanding even as competition in the industry is heating up. Earlier this month, Reliance Industries sold most of its Asian Paints shares worth 77 billion rupees ($895 million). Reliance, which invested nearly 20 years ago, has been reducing its stake amid slowing demand and rising competition from new players such as billionaire Kumar Birla's Birla Opus.
Jindal is the chair of JSW Group, which she inherited from her late husband, Om Prakash Jindal. She and her family have an estimated net worth of $37.9 billion, according to Forbes' real-time data. Her son, Sajjan Jindal, based in Mumbai, manages the group's major businesses, including JSW Steel, JSW Cement, and JSW Paints.
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