The holding company for packaging carton and machinery manufacturer SIG (Neuhausen / Switzerland; www.sig.ch) has rejected a cash takeover offer from a consortium of two private equity firms, including FERD (Lysaker / Norway), which owns composite carton producer Elopak (Spikkestad / Norway; www.elopak.com), and CVC Capital Partners (London / UK; www.cvceurope.com). The offer of CHF 325 (EUR 205) per share valued SIG´s equity at CHF 2.1 bn and translated into a multiple of 30 times earnings per share for the 12 months ended 30 June 2006.

The consortium partners said the offer would be increased to CHF 350 per share if SIG granted due diligence and there was a satisfactory outcome of the review. SIG, however, rejected the offer as inadequate. It said other potential buyers should now be given an opportunity to evaluate a takeover, as it has received "earlier indications of interest from various parties." SIG Combibloc and Elopak are the carton packaging market’s second and third largest players. A merger would place the combined business closer to market leader Tetra Pak.

Five days prior to its offer for SIG, Elopak reached agreement with Schouw (Aarhus / Denmark; www.schouw.dk) to take over all shares in their two 50:50 packaging joint ventures, Elopak Denmark and Elopak in Sweden. The acquisition strengthens Elopak’s position in liquid food packaging markets.