The agreement struck with the DOJ calls for Georgia-Pacific to sell its existing "away-from-home" tissue business, or the operation that supplies tissue products to commercial businesses, which includes approximately 368,000 tons of tissue-manufacturing capacity and nine facilities.
The Atlanta-based company, which has already said it would divest the commercial business, said it is in discussions with more than one potential purchaser. Fort James also runs a small commercial tissue-manufacturing business that is not included in the sale.
Georgia-Pacific offered to purchase Fort James, the No. 1 North American tissue provider, for $29.60 a share in cash plus 0.2644 of a G-P share for each Fort James share (all figures in U.S. dollars).
Georgia-Pacific is also planning to assume roughly $3.5 billion in Fort James debt, a ratio that gave the transaction an initial enterprise value of approximately $11.1 billion, although Wall Street has since shaved about $300 million off that total.
The deal will create a dominant consumer paper products company producing everything from Quilted Northern and Angel Soft tissues to Brawny and Sparkle paper towel brands with annual revenues in excess of $25 billion.
