An activist investor has built up a 15% stake in Swiss chemicals group Clariant and is vowing to fight its planned US$20 billion merger with Huntsman.
White Tale Holdings, an investment partnership created by hedge funds Corvex and 40 North, has written to Clariant’s board, urging them to rethink the deal.
“It both significantly destroys existing Clariant shareholder value and prevents Clariant from pursuing multiple alternative and immediate opportunities to unlock value for its shareholders,” the investor wrote in a letter published on Tuesday, September 19.
The letter continued, “The proposed transaction has no strategic merit and is a complete reversal of your own publicly-stated strategy of becoming a pure-play specialty chemicals company.”
White Tale Holdings said it had become Clariant’s biggest shareholder with a stake over just over 50 million shares and would vote against the merger unless the company explored “all strategic alternatives” to the deal.
Full Content: Financial Times
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