General Electric´s (GE) aviation and aerospace division GE Aviation has issued an offer to take buy all shares of the German manufacturer SLM Solution as well as the Swedish Arcam AB.
September 7th 2016 – GE Aviation offers a sum of over $1.4 billion ($762 million for SLM and $685 form Arcam) for two manufacturers of metal 3D printing systems. Major shareholder from SLM Solutions already agreed to sell their 31,5% shares and recommend to all shareholders to sell their shares too. Arcam also issued a recommendation to their investors to sell their shares to GE.
GE CEO, Jeff Immelt:
“Additive manufacturing will drive new levels of productivity for GE, our customers, including a wide array of additive manufacturing customers, and for the industrial world,”
GE agreed with both companies to keep their employees, managers and headquarters. They even want to further invest in the companies assets.
Dr. Markus Rechlin, CEO SLM Solutions:
“GE Aviation is a strong partner with outstanding technology expertise. Together, we will continue to develop our technology at our site in Lübeck and position our company on an even broader basis as part of a large, internationally successful group. We expect the takeover to accelerate SLM Solutions’ evolution into a comprehensive systems supplier. For this reason, the takeover offers great opportunities for our employees and customers.”
October 21th 2016 – Update: Hedge Fund blocks SLM Solutions Deal
The hedge fund Elliott Management blocks GE´s takeover of SLM Solutions. Elliot Management Corp. is managed by billionaire Paul Singer and holds more than 20% of SLM Solutions. To Singer GE´s offering “is not in the best interests of SLM shareholders”.
The weekend will be tense because the offer for SLM Solutions will expire on Monday. GE can extend or raise the offer to the shareholders. Or even cancel the deal.
SLM Solutions´ share price since GE´s public offer:
GE also faces difficulties with the original offer to Arcam AB´s shareholders. GE only managed to gain shares just over 40% till the first offer expired at October 14th. So GE had to extend the offer till November 1st 2016.
October 28th 2016 – Update: SLM Deal is off – GE buys Concept Laser
After not getting enough of SLM Solutions shares GE dropped the tender and moved on to another german company. Yesterday GE acquired 75% of Concept Laser, a company based in Lichtenfels. Concept Laser builds powerful 3D printers for metal using their own LaserCUSING technology.
David Joyce, GE Vice Chairman und President & CEO von GE Aviation:
“We have taken further steps to pursue Arcam ownership as we advance our additive strategy. We are delighted to achieve the strategic cornerstone in our additive strategy by announcing today our acquisition of Concept Laser. The Arcam offer is a next step in our strategy. We have become the partner of choice in the additive space and are receiving numerous requests for alternative ways to accelerate our strategy.”
Concept Laser is a privately held which made the process for GE much easier.
To ensure that Arcam shareholders sell their stock to GE, they extended the offer till November 10th and raised the price for the deal from 280 SEK to 300 SEK per share.
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