Nippon Paint said to offer US$8.6 billion for Akzo Nobel paint arm

NIPPON Paint Holdings has made multiple offers for Akzo Nobel NV’s decorative paints business in the past month, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The Tokyo-listed group made its first offer three weeks ago, with a follow-up offer that valued the business at 7.5 billion euros (US$8.6 billion) last week, said the people, who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorised to speak publicly. 

Akzo Nobel’s management team didn’t engage with Nippon on the offer, which values the unit at about 12 times its 2026 earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation, nor has it communicated the offers to shareholders, the people said.

No final decision has been made and Nippon could elect to stop its pursuit, the people said.

Representatives for Nippon and Akzo Nobel didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The bid for the business comes just a month after Nippon and Sherwin-Williams ended a joint bid for the entirety of the Dutch paint maker, having seen two all-cash offers rejected.

Akzo Nobel said the joint bid would have difficulty getting regulatory approval and its existing agreement to merge with Axalta Coating Systems, announced last November, remained superior. 

Should Nippon’s new offer succeed it would reunify the Dulux brand on a global basis, while strengthening the companies’ presence in Europe given the decorative paint unit derives almost two thirds of its revenue from the continent, the people said.

Akzo Nobel announced on an earnings call last year that it was exploring a sale of parts of its decorative paints unit in South-east Asia. Nippon is focused on buying the entirety of the unit and is unlikely to make an offer for that division alone, the people said. 

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Akzo Nobel’s deal with Axalta would create a paint maker with an enterprise value of about US$25 billion. The Dutch firm would own 55 per cent of the combined entity and move its stock market listing to New York from Amsterdam. The deal still requires regulatory approval from the Federal Trade Commission in the US, which has requested further information from both firms, according to a May filing. 

Nippon Paint previously derailed merger talks between Axalta and Akzo Nobel in 2017, before itself failing to reach an agreement to buy Axalta. Akzo Nobel also rebuffed an unsolicited US$29 billion buyout offer from rival PPG Industries the same year. BLOOMBERG