Dusseldorf The largest private industrial gases manufacturer Messer gets a new shareholder in the Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC and restructures the group. This was announced by the family-run Messer SE on Tuesday. The company did not give specific figures.
In financial circles it is said that GIC is taking over a minority stake of around 20 percent in the Hessian company and is paying more than two billion euros for it.
For the 125th anniversary of the family company, entrepreneur Stefan Messer is giving himself a big present. Because the billion-euro deal with GIC is the decisive step in giving the family complete control over the operational business again – a plan that Messer has been working on for years.
The group has so far operated a large joint venture with the financial investor CVC, in which the businesses in North and South America and in several Western European countries are bundled. According to circles, CVC holds 42 percent of the shares. However, the voting rights are distributed almost equally, so that until now Messer has had to coordinate and agree on all issues with the financial investor.
Messer now wants to use the money from Singapore to buy back CVC’s shares and dissolve the joint venture called Messer Industries. The operational business is to be integrated back into the family-run Messer SE, which will then operate all global businesses alone. This should be completed by the end of 2023.
Messer competes with Linde, Air Liquide and Air Products
GIC from Singapore will take over a minority stake in the umbrella company, which is well below a blocking minority. In any case, state funds are considered to be more of a silent shareholder – unlike financial investors. Messer would then have a freer hand again in its own company.
Messer SE is the largest private provider in the global industrial gases sector. The Hessian company competes with the “Big Three” – the listed companies Linde, Air Liquide from France and Air Products from the USA.
Stefan Messer relinquished management of the company at the end of April and has headed the Supervisory Board ever since. Bernd Eulitz, who used to head Knorr- Bremse AG and worked for many years on the board of competitor Linde, became the new CEO in the anniversary year.
The Hessian company is the largest privately run industrial gases manufacturer in the world.
(Photo: obs)
In 2022, Messer had sales of 4.2 billion euros and adjusted profit (Ebitda) of 1.2 billion euros. The joint venture with CVC accounted for 62 percent of sales and almost two-thirds of profits.
When the joint venture was concluded in 2019, the company had already declared that it would bring all global business back into family hands as quickly as possible. Now the opportunity presented itself.
CVC apparently makes a very good cut. In financial circles it is said that the sale price of the share is a good three billion euros. That is almost five times more than the financial investor had paid in 2018.
Stefan Messer knows Dibelius from his days at Goldman Sachs
At the time, Messer had taken over almost all of its competitor Linde’s North American business, as well as several locations in Latin America. Since they could not handle the acquisition on their own, the Hessian company brought CVC on board. The financial investor contributed the necessary equity for the takeover, and the family company contributed its Western European business as an asset.
At the time, founding the joint venture was the best solution for Messer so as not to have to shoulder the risks of such a large takeover and the subsequent integration alone. However, the financial investor received equal voting rights in decisions.
It was an unusual step for Stefan Messer, but the constellation was based on a personal relationship of trust. An old acquaintance sat across from him at CVC in 2018: Alexander Dibelius, Germany head of Goldman Sachs until 2015 and since then head of the German branch of the investor. Both knew each other from a previous deal.
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Messer was founded as a family business, but sold three quarters of its shares to the Hoechst Group in 1965. In 1998, Stefan Messer moved up to the management board as a representative of the third generation. His dream of keeping the company and bringing it back into family hands turned into a concrete plan. With the break-up of Hoechst after 1998, the possibility of implementation opened up, but the family did not have the money to buy it back.
This was contributed in 2001 by the two financial investors Allianz Capital Partners and Goldman Sachs, with Dibelius at the helm. For Messer, this was just a temporary liaison from the start: four years later, he took over the shares in the private equity firm, albeit at a high price: the company had to sell its businesses in the USA and Germany.
Stefan Messer then rebuilt the latter, and he got the former back in 2018 with the help of CVC. Since then, Messer’s goal for the group has been: global presence, controlled by the family. He soon achieved it.
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