In February the country’s second largest coatings manufacturer PPG announced a review of “strategic alternatives” for its architectural coatings business in the United States and Canada.
Lipsticking his pig, PPG chief executive Tim Knavish stated at that time that his company had spent several years “Modernizing the architectural coatings business” to better position the division for “continued success.”
Right before adding that he'll be better off without them!
Since that time, paint’s hot stove has sizzled with rumors of a sale–fodder for dealers and employees of the brand concerned for their collective futures.
A future I believe they’ll glimpse soon enough.
Mixed in with the rumors was my first-person account allowed by a prospective buyer looking for industry expertise. That engagement briefly allowing a ringside seat for the industry’s most consequential transaction since Berkshire-Hathaway’s acquisition of Benjamin Moore in November of 2000.
But fate would not have me write that book.
Because earlier this summer I lost that access when PPG cut the number of parties they were negotiating with based on offer size and my group fell below that cut. No surprise considering my views on the division’s value and urgings not to overpay. That advice though, obligated I find a new source if I wanted to remain informed.
Despite Tim’s ghosting, other sources have shared recently that PPG sold their architectural coatings division to a private equity group and that an announcement can be expected sometime in the third quarter. Plausible considering my understanding of negotiations through that first-person involvement.
Whatever the timing, if PPG does divest itself to private equity it will be a seismic shift for hundreds of dealers and thousands of employees. Their businesses and careers in the hands of ownership more likely to make cuts than investments as they seek to make profitable that which PPG never could.
And we all know how that went the last time!
I am Fine. Am I Fine?
It’s been less than two-weeks since my mother’s passing, not enough time for friends and family to stop reaching out to ask how I am doing.
Nor time enough to know how to answer, my current state a pendulum swinging between gratitude and grief often with no more than a pang to mark the transition.
When my father died I was far more angry, our complicated relationship and his sudden ending conspiring to bring grief only possible with the realization that some questions will forever go unanswered.
But the journey with my mother accumulated no such baggage and the four years spent in Connecticut after receiving a terminal diagnosis allowed a conversation long enough to quash any doubts that we had more to say.
Those years a gift which does allow a softer sorrow.
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