By Doug Young
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Top Chinese appliance maker Haier and private equity giants Bain and Blackstone have bid $1.28 billion for Maytag Corp., trumping Ripplewood's offer for the ailing U.S. corporation.
Haier's global ambitions would be boosted with the addition of Maytag, the maker of washing machines and Hoover vacuums that has fallen on tough times amid rising costs and competition from low-cost makers.
Maytag said in a statement released late on Monday in New York that it had received a preliminary bid of $16 a share from a consortium comprising Haier Group, Bain Capital and The Blackstone Group.
That would be about 14 percent higher than a $14 per share offer by U.S. buyout firm Ripplewood Holdings LLC., part of a consortium whose members include Goldman Sach's GS Capital Partners and the J. Rothschild Group.
Under the Haier proposal, due diligence is expected to take six to eight weeks to complete, Maytag said in its statement. The group would look to Merrill Lynch to provide debt financing, it added.
"We continue to support the Ripplewood transaction," Howard Clark, Maytag's lead director, said in a statement.
"However, we also believe that it is incumbent on us to pursue this possibility of achieving a higher price for our stockholders."
No official counter offer had been submitted yet, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters. Bain and Blackstone declined comment. Haier has said it was interested in Maytag, but a spokeswoman would not comment further on Tuesday.
"Chinese companies don't have brand equity outside of China," a Tokyo-based analyst said.
"To build that themselves, in the same way the Toyotas of the world do it, is pretty hard. It's the intangible assets they're buying."
THE LONG HAUL
Their competing bid would also mark the first major attempt at an international acquisition by Haier Group, a state conglomerate that controls Shanghai-listed Qingdao Haier Refrigerator Co. Ltd. and Hong Kong-listed Haier Electronics Group Co. Ltd.
Haier Electronics had climbed 2.6 percent to HK$0.198 by 0611 GMT, vastly outperforming the market's 0.21 percent dip.
Haier is probably willing to pay a premium for Maytag because it could keep the company over the longer term for its brand, while Ripplewood would be more likely to sell in the long run, the Tokyo-based analyst said.
The consortium, whose Haier component came from Haier America Trading LLC, had expressed its interest in the run-up to a deadline last Friday for competing offers.
Maytag shares closed up 7 cents at $15.23 in Monday trading in New York. Its shares are up about 5 percent since word first emerged last week that Haier and others were considering rival bids for the company.
Haier is a well-known name in China, commanding 26 percent of the domestic refrigerator market and 17 percent of the air conditioning market at the end of 2003.
It is also one of the nation's few brands to make headway in foreign markets, cornering nearly half the U.S. compact refrigerator market and more than half that for wine coolers.
OVERSEAS M&A
Haier's foray would follow similar moves by some of China's biggest firms as they look beyond their domestic strongholds.
Generally, Chinese companies have picked up struggling businesses in mature industries, hoping to use their growing prowess as low-cost manufacturers to turn those assets around.
Earlier this year, Lenovo Group Ltd. purchased the PC-making unit of IBM for $1.25 billion. It later brought in private equity firms Texas Pacific Group, General Atlantic LLC and Newbridge Capital LLC, which contributed $350 million as part of the deal.
TCL Corp. has also been active, buying the cellphone-making assets of France's Alcatel S.A. and the TV-making assets of France's Thomson
But the Chinese move abroad has also included some stumbles, such as an aborted takeover of struggling British carmaker MG Rover by top car maker Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp.
Oil company CNOOC Ltd. has expressed possible interest in U.S. oil company Unocal Corp., and China's Minmetals Corp. has expressed interest in Canadian mining firm Noranda Inc.
(Additional reporting by Godwin Chellam in Shanghai, Chawadee Nualkhair in Tokyo and Michael Flaherty in New York)
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