Cladding Contractor Permasteelisa Is Set for Sale to U.S. Private Equity Firm
Permasteelisa S.p.A., the Italy-based global specialty fabricator and contractor known for advanced building façade installation on iconic towers and other structures with complex geometrics, is set to be sold to private equity firm Atlas Holdings LLC, Greenwich, Conn., in an agreement with current owner Japan-based Lixil Group Corp., which was announced May 4.
The purchase price and other terms of the sale of the 6,000-person firm were not disclosed, but the transaction could close by summer subject to regulatory approvals.
Permasteelisa had expanded into other parts of Europe as well as Asia and the US in the 1980s and 1990s. Lixil, a water fixture and housing technology firm, acquired it in 2011 from private equity firms for about $812 million. Permasteelisa revenue was not disclosed, but it has been reported as about $1.17 billion.
Permasteelisa has been involved in facade construction on more than 3,500 projects including high-profile structures such as the Shard in London, Apple Computer's campus in Cupertino, Calif., three towers of the World Trade Center redevelopment in New York City and World Financial Center in Shanghai.
Projects also include Mira Tower, a 40-story residential high-rise in San Francisco, recently completed, as well as Google headquarters and the Battersea power station, both in the U.K.
In its work on the 76-story Beekman Tower, which when it opened in 2011 was the tallest residential tower in the Western Hamisphere, the firm installed 10,911 rectangular panels for 427,734 sq ft of the eight-sided tower, now called 8 Spruce Street.
"Permasteelisa drives innovation in the curtainwall sector by integrating design, engineering, manufacturing capabilities and project management to achieve works of excellence worldwide,” said CEO Klaus Lother. “We are now entering a new phase of our evolution."
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Lixil said the sale "enables us to reduce our risk exposure in non-core areas of operation."
The Japanese owner had planned in 2017 to sell Permasteelisa to Chinese design-build firm Grandland Holding Group Ltd. But the sale was terminated in October 2018 after the U.S. government blocked the transaction for unspecified national security reasons.
Some media speculated the opposition was related to the firm's work on U.S. embassies.
The intended new parent, Atlas Holdings, owns about 20 companies that include those that manufacture structural wood and aluminum products and other building materials.
