A $400 million deal is rare game these days, but Alston & Bird partner Janine Brown was fortunate enough to bag one.
She and associate David A. Wender, along with Canadian firm Lang Michener, represent Georgia-Pacific in its recently announced deal to purchase four compressed-board facilities from Grant Forest Products, a Canadian company that in June received judicial protection from creditors after a General Electric Co. unit tried to force it into bankruptcy.
The transaction, which is expected to close in the first half of this year, is subject to approval from the Canadian court overseeing Grant’s agreement under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act, which protects Grant from lawsuits and creditors, but allows it to continue operations.
A Georgia-Pacific spokesman said that the deal also will be subject to approval by a U.S. bankruptcy court, but he could not immediately identify which one.
Brown and Wender could not be reached for comment by this blog’s posting deadline.
The deal also is subject to U.S. and Canadian regulatory review.
The factories, which produce what is called oriented strand board, an engineered wood product used for, among other things, subflooring, are located in Englehart and Earlton, Ontario, and in Allendale, S.C., and employ about 300 workers. When market conditions allow, Georgia-Pacific plans to complete construction on another plant, in Clarendon, S.C., which could employ 100 more people. The company, in a statement, also said it plans to make capital investments of “several million dollars” to improve facilities.
Grant’s financial troubles, which were exacerbated by the lagging construction market, had about $516.8 million in secured debt, according to a Bloomberg story published in June. The article said that General Electric asked a judge to put Grant into bankruptcy because of debts related to airplanes Grant leased from a GE division.