Saint-Gobain has received antitrust approval to complete its acquisition of Sika.
The French company said that all antitrust authorities had given their pre-closing clearance and that no remedy was requested. It follows final receipt of unconditional approval from the CADE, Brazil’s competition authority, for the acquisition of control of Sika.
It is in line with other unconditional approvals that Saint-Gobain had already received for the acquisition, including those from Switzerland and the European Commission.
The European Commission concluded: “Sika and Saint-Gobain do not generally seem to be close competitors as their offerings are rather complementary in terms of quality and brand perception.”
Saint-Gobain said the unconditional issuance of all pre-closing antitrust approvals followed the collapse of other arguments used by Sika’s board to delay the closing of the transaction.
The Swiss Takeover Board (TOB) and Swiss financial markets authority (FINMA) had both repeatedly confirmed that they have no reservations to the application of an opt-out clause. Saint-Gobain said this was evidence that it had respected Swiss law.
Saint-Gobain said it was now confident that Swiss courts would close the deal.
