Travis Perkins to buy BSS
Travis Perkins is to acquire BSS Group for £557.6m, making it the country’s biggest plumbing and heating chain.
The offer – made up of cash and shares –?values each BSS share at 435.8 pence, a 4.7 per cent premium on Friday’s closing price of 416.2p.
Travis Perkins charman Robert Walker said: “Our respective businesses are complementary and we look forward to working with BSS’s customers, suppliers and employees.”
The company said it believed it could achieve pre-tax savings of at least £25m in 2013 through the deal.
Travis Perkins had first signalled its intention to buy BSS in May.
BSS chairman Peter Warry said: “The management team and employees have succeeded in building BSS into a leading specialist distributor to trade customers and a market leader in the UK plumbing and heating sector, creating significant value for shareholders.
The deal will create the UK’s leading plumbing and heating distribution business ahead of Wolseley, the companies claimed.
The combined company would generate revenues of £4.3bn and employ 19,000 staff.
Travis Perkins competes with Wolseley, the world’s largest building supplies company. HSBC and Nomura advised Travis Perkins. BSS’s lead advisers were Lazard and RBS Hoare Govett were corporate brokers.
MICHAEL PESCOD
ADVISOR AT NOMURA
MICHAEL Pescod jointly led the deal with Charles Packshaw of HSBC for Travis Perkins.
Pescod became an investment banker in 2001 and joined Japanese firm Nomura as an adviser in December 2009 after their takeover of corporate finance advisory firm Tricorn, of which he was a founder. Previously he worked at Slaughter and May where he was head of the firm’s corporate finance practice.
Packshaw started out as a civil engineer before completing an MBA at London Business School.
He worked at Lazard’s for 18 years becoming managing director, before moving to HSBC to become head of UK Advisory in 2002. He has advised Travis Perkins previously, working on their purchase of Wickes.
For BSS, Richard Stables led the team for Lazard’s, who acted as lead advisers. Stables, a longstanding managing director, was assisted in the deal by Vasco Litchfield, a Lazard director.
The team from RBS?Hoare Govett was led by John MacGowan.