Versum Stockholders Approve Acquisition by Merck

Mer­ck, a sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny, announced that its trans­ac­tion with Ver­sum Mate­ri­als was approved at a spe­cial meet­ing of Versum’s stock­hold­ers. On April 12, 2019, Mer­ck had signed a defin­i­tive agree­ment to acquire Ver­sum for US$53 per share in cash.

“We are pleased that Ver­sum stock­hold­ers have vot­ed in favor of us mov­ing for­ward with this trans­ac­tion. With com­ple­men­tary port­fo­lios Ver­sum and our Per­for­mance Mate­ri­als busi­ness will cre­ate a lead­ing elec­tron­ic mate­ri­als play­er capa­ble of cap­i­tal­iz­ing on attrac­tive long-term sec­u­lar growth dri­vers so as to pro­vide long-term ben­e­fits for our cus­tomers, employ­ees and owners.”

Ste­fan Oschmann, Chair­man of the Exec­u­tive Board and CEO of Merck

The trans­ac­tion is expect­ed to close in the sec­ond half of 2019, sub­ject to reg­u­la­to­ry clear­ances and the sat­is­fac­tion of oth­er cus­tom­ary clos­ing con­di­tions. The applic­a­ble wait­ing peri­od under the Hart-Scott-Rodi­no Antitrust Improve­ments Act of 1976 for U.S. antitrust pur­pos­es has expired, and the trans­ac­tion has been cleared by antitrust author­i­ties in Ger­many, Aus­tria and Serbia.

Ver­sum is a lead­ing sup­pli­er of inno­va­tion-dri­ven, high-puri­ty process chem­i­cals, gas­es and equip­ment for semi­con­duc­tor man­u­fac­tur­ing. The busi­ness com­bi­na­tion is expect­ed to ben­e­fit the Per­for­mance Mate­ri­als busi­ness sec­tor of Mer­ck and thus sup­ports, in terms of vol­ume, the rebal­anc­ing of the company’s diver­si­fied three-pil­lar port­fo­lio of Health­care, Life Sci­ence and Per­for­mance Materials.