Press Releases

29/11/00

BBA Group PLC sells Automotive Friction Materials Division for £389 million

We are delighted to inform you that BBA Group PLC has agreed the acquisition of its Automotive Friction materials business by HSBC Private Equity for a total sum of £389 million. Following completion of the deal, Automotive Friction will become a stand-alone company, with financial backing from HSBC, and run by members of the existing management team. The new company will be named TMD Friction. TMD stands for our well-known strong brands Textar, Mintex and Don, on which we will continue to rely.

As a result of this step, the friction materials division will now be focused on the automotive sector, and will strengthen its position as the leading supplier of automotive friction materials in Europe, and one of the three largest suppliers' world-wide.

This move will position BBA Group PLC as a leading player in two businesses: aviation services and materials technology, both of which are growth areas.

HSBC Private Equity is the European equity arm of the HSBC group, one of the largest financial service institutions world-wide. HSBC group has a market capitalisation of approximately £60 billion on the London, New York and Hong Kong Stock Exchanges. As such it is a very stable and committed owner for our business, and supports our plans to grow the business further both organically and through acquisition.

In recent years, as BBA Friction, we have become the leader in the European market, and developed our technology base significantly. Under new ownership and as a focused business, we intend to expand our technology base and the global reach by:

• A strong geographic expansion programme, focusing particularly on the US, Far East and South America, driven by growing demand from our globalising European customer base.
• Accelerating the roll-out of our successful Hercules technology to the whole company, thus offering a consistent product range for all major automotive markets.
• Continuing to improve the levels of service to our OE and IAM customers by expanding the range of service and products offered to our customers. Our offer will be supported by market-dedicated centres of excellence, taking care of the different requirements in each of the major global markets.

TMD Friction will be run by the following management consisting of:

Dr Erich Bauer,	Chairman
Jurgen Hein,	Finance
Ludwig Ervens,	OE Sales 1 R&D
Klaus Drdsser,	Operations

Country managing directors will directly report to the Chairman. Best practice applications throughout the group will be supported by centrally co-ordinated functions in the field of IAM, materials procurement, quality, and IT.