SIG owner Rank Group could buy Pactiv this week: reports

The news agency quoted two unnamed sources close to the negotiations as saying that should the talks with Rank break down, private equity group Apollo Capital Management or industrials conglomerate Koch Industries could step in to buy the business.

Today’s reports come three months after Rank was first connected with Pactiv. At the time, paper packaging group Georgia-Pacific was also thought to be in the running for the business.

Although no price for the company has been publicly mooted, the business, which is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, currently has a market capitalisation of $4.1bn.

Rank’s biggest deal
Should the deal with Rank go through at a price near that, it would be Hart’s biggest packaging acquisition. He paid $2.5bn for SIG in early 2007 and $2.7bn for part of mining group Alcoa’s packaging business later that year.

Hart, who is New Zealand’s richest man, also reorganised the ownership structure of two of his biggest packaging businesses, Closure Systems International and Reynolds Consumer Products, last autumn.

Pactiv is based in Lake Forest, Illinois and specialises in the consumer and foodservice/food packaging markets. It posted sales of $3.36bn in 2009 with pre-tax profits of $486bn.

Click here for today’s headlines from across the packaging industry

Popular Articles