update skidoo sale pending
Amsnow
FROM REUTERS NEWS:
Train and plane maker Bombardier Inc. said on Wednesday it agreed to sell its snowmobile unit for C$1.2 billion ($863 million) to a group that includes its founding family, and unveiled a second-quarter profit that met analysts' forecasts.
Bain Capital, a U.S.-based private investment firm with more than C$23 billion of assets under management, will own 50 percent of the new firm, the Bombardier family will hold 35 percent and the Caisse 15 percent, Laurent Beaudoin, executive chairman of Bombardier, said in a statement.
The Bombardier family, which includes Beaudoin, will continue to hold 17 percent of the equity and 58 percent of the voting rights in Bombardier Inc., a spokesman said. "A lot of people were vying to purchase this recreational division and the price is very good.... It takes some of the uncertainty out of Bombardier stock," said Kyle Mackay, portfolio manager at Leeward Hedge Funds Inc. in Toronto.
The origins of Bombardier, now the world's third-largest civil aircraft maker and No. 1 manufacturer of passenger trains, go back to the 1940s when founder Joseph-Armand Bombardier made tracked vehicles for transportation over snow.
Bombardier expects the transaction, which is subject to purchase price adjustments and government approvals, to be completed by mid-fall 2003.