An Aberdeen based marine services firm is to be sold for $12million in an “extremely unusual” deal thought to be one of the first of its kind.
Actuant Corporation has agreed to sell Viking Seatech, which provides temporary and permanent mooring services, to its competitors Acteon Group.
In exchange Acteon Group will sell their tools manufacturing business Mirage Machines to Actuant for around $16million.
It is expected that the deals will close simultaneously at the end of September.
Last night, James Gaskell global business development leader at Actuant said during his 20 years in mergers and acquisitions he has never witnessed a deal like it.
“It is not a direct swap as such, that would be a more complicated deal,” he said.
“The decision was taken that we wanted to focus more away from the front end exploration and production part of the life cycle. Acteon has the business called Mirage which make on site machining tools and fits perfectly into our business.
“It is very, very unusual to have these two deals happening, absolutely at the same time. Within the M and A activity transactions have been relatively few and far between, especially in the north-east of Scotland.
“One of the drivers of activity when it does happen is consolidation and both of these transactions are really driven by that philosophy looking to consolidate.”
Mr Gaskell said that he had not been made aware of any future plans for Viking Seatech however added: “Viking and its client base will benefit from the much broader range of offshore and subsea services that Acteon offers. With both Viking and Mirage being global businesses, the benefits of these transactions will reach far outside the north-east of Scotland and the UKCS.”