Smith & Wesson is up for sale!

M

Meat-Hook

New member
I spotted this on another site.

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British Conglomerate Tomkins Looks To Sell Smith
& Wesson Handgun Unit

Updated 8:14 PM ET July 23, 2000


NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)-
Smith & Wesson Corp., the largest
U.S. handgun maker, is being put
up for sale by its British parent,
Monday's Wall Street Journal
reported.

London-based Tomkins PLC, long derided as an unfocused
"guns-to-buns" conglomerate, is in the process of selling off
noncore operations to focus on automobile parts and
home-building materials.

That streamlining will include a sale of Springfield, Mass.-based
Smith & Wesson, Tomkins Chief Executive Gregory Hutchings
said Friday. Though Smith & Wesson is Tomkins's (TKS)
best-known brand in the U.S., it accounts for only about 1% of
the company's total sales. Hutchings said Tomkins hasn't yet held
talks with potential buyers for the gun unit.

The prospect that Tomkins might unload S&W raised concerns
among regulators that the company's recent role as an industry
peacemaker in the gun debate might be jeopardized.

In March, the company reached a landmark agreement with the
Clinton administration and a number of state and local
governments to adopt restrictions on the way it makes and
markets handguns. In exchange, many of the local governments
that have sued the gun industry as a whole agreed to drop the
company from those court actions. The Clinton administration
also agreed not to name S&W in any suit it may file against the
gun industry.

Copyright (c) 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

All Rights Reserved.








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An interesting point on a Smith&WEsson sale is that the new ownership could probably not be held liable for the actions of the company under previous ownership and that the Clinton agreement might be very difficult for the Administration to try to enforce,
 
I bid $1. Just so I can fire all the Klintoon stooges and declare chapter 11.

------------------
BOYCOTT SLICK & WESSON

"To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it."
Confucius
 
Watch for another big-name gun company to make the highest bid... then suddenly forget their stand against the S&W agreement as well. If a big enough company "sells out," they'll have their market share back and those lucrative government contracts. :mad:
 
I sugestd some time ago that # & * should be purchased by the NRA. I think that it is still a good idea.

------------------

Yeah, I got a permit to carry,it's called the friggin Constitution.---Ted Nugent

"Glock 26: 17 rounds of concealed carry DEATH comming your way from out of nowhere!!! THAT'S FIREPOWER, BABY!!!"
 
Hard Ball wrote:
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>
An interesting point on a Smith&WEsson sale is that the new ownership could probably not be held liable for the actions of the company under previous ownership and that the Clinton agreement might be very difficult for the Administration to try to enforce,
[/quote]

HB,

The answer is, it depends on how the deal is structured. I would guess that Tompkins would divest S&W as an asset sale, rather than spinning it off and selling the stock of the new organization. The difference; in an asset sale, the buyer and seller list out all the liabilities and assets the buyer is assuming, including all contracts and agreements. If it is done as a stock merger, all the warts come along with the purchase.

I would suspect that if a US entity were to attempt to buy S&W, Tompkins would make the agreement part of the package, as well as any liability for lawsuit during the period where Tompkins held the company. They are doing this to clean up their portfolio, and I don’t think they want that sword of Damocles hanging over their heads.

Also, Joel Klien’s group at DOJ will probably need to put it’s blessing on any transaction. Yet another party who would want the agreement to tag along.

I think it would take a lot of money to divorce S&W from the agreement, far more than the ongoing business venture would justify. A more likely (positive) scenario is that Tompkins decides to shut the unit down, a group of investors picks up the facilities and equipment on the cheap, and re-hires the staff.

One can always hope.

Marty
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>The prospect that Tomkins might unload S&W raised concerns among regulators that the company's recent role as an industry peacemaker in the gun debate might be jeopardized[/quote]

Oh WHAAAAAA!!!

Thats just what NEEDS to happen!

We need an American Buy Back and take that agreement and TEAR IT UP... With letters of Appologies to be paid advertisments in all the gun rags - "This is the New S&W - There is no more 'agreement' to anyone but our customers - the Shooting Public - and that agreement is to make the best guns we can and help fight for your rights!"
 
Re sale of S & W, and the possibility of Tompkins doing the deal so that the "agreement and potential or actual law suits" were part of the purchase, potential customers might them simply WALK AWAY, leaving Tompkins wearing its very own "millstone", around its neck or elsewhere.
 
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