Citation
Bean, J. (1999), "New owner for Spies Hecker as well as Herberts", Pigment & Resin Technology, Vol. 28 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/prt.1999.12928aaa.005
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 1999, MCB UP Limited
New owner for Spies Hecker as well as Herberts
New owner for Spies Hecker as well as Herberts
As announced last autumn, Herberts GmbH, plus all its subsidiaries, is the latest multinational coatings company to come under new ownership. Mark you, nowadays they tend to use the euphemism of "a new investor". Hoechst sold off Herberts as part of Hoechst's drive to concentrate on the areas of health and nutrition, which we assume is medicine and drugs (in the medicinal sense, of course), by the year 2000, and thus become a "Life Sciences" group.
The new owner, or investor, is the American company Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR).
It is now announced that it is a development which also affects Spies Hecker, one of Europe's leading suppliers of automotive refinish paints and the market leader in Germany. The capital shares Hoechst held in Spies Hecker have already been transferred to Herberts, so that Spies Hecker now also has KKR as a new shareholder.
As well as being the first refinish paint supplier to launch high solid products on the market, Spies Hecker says it was also the first manufacturer to present the waterborne clearcoat. It is represented in more than 70 countries world-wide. In the UK it has invested £1million in a purpose-built, state-of-the-art Training Centre at its headquarters in Chadwell Heath, Essex.
John Bean