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Doublestar Buys 45% of Kumho Tire

Autosphere » Tires » Doublestar Buys 45% of Kumho Tire

Doublestar has announced that its parent has agreed to pay 646.3 billion won ($597.4 million) for a 45 percent stake in South Korea’s troubled Kumho Tire Co Inc.

A unit of its controlling shareholder, Doublestar Group, would buy 129.3 million ordinary shares in Kumho Tire, capping a lengthy takeover process, the Chinese firm said in a statement to the Shenzhen exchange.

In September, Korea Development Bank (KDB) and other Kumho Tire creditors terminated an $872 million deal to sell a stake in Kumho to Doublestar after the Chinese firm demanded a cheaper price, citing the tire maker’s weakening profits.

An over-ambitious acquisition strategy run by Kumho Tire’s former parent company before the global financial crisis left the conglomerate saddled with debt, leading to Kumho Tire being put under a creditor-led debt restructuring in late 2009.

In January last year, Kumho Tire said that Doublestar had been chosen as the preferred bidder to buy a controlling stake in the firm. The South Korean firm’s creditor originally put the stake up for sale in 2016.

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