The board of the Charter group has recommended a cash takeover bid of GBP 1.53bn (USD 2.39bn) from American manufacturing group Colfax. This follows an unsuccessful bid, raised three times, from company turnaround specialist Melrose and Charter opening its books for due diligence.
Charter owns two major business divisions; Howden and ESAB. Howden is well known as the Renfrew, Scotland-based manufacturer of fans for tunnel and mining applications, and is also involved in automation. It also used to maker tunnelling shield machines. ESAB manufactures welding and cutting equipment.
Colfax operates a number of companies and brands mainly manufacturing pumping systems for marine, defence, general lubrication, oil and gas industry applications.
Charter chair Lars Emilson said, “Colfax has committed to provide continued stability for our employees and continued development of the ESAB and Howden offering for our customers.”
Howden employs 4360 staff of which 810 are based in the UK. Charter acquired Howden in 1997.
