Huntman & Hexion Vs. Bankers, Trouble Merger-Land? (HUN)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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Huntsman_logoHuntsman Corporation (NYSE: HUN) is now indicated down after a rise yesterday.  Apparently, Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse have said they do not want to fund the Apollo-led merger with the Hexion merger financing.

Hexion announced that late last night it received correspondence fromcounsel to affiliates of Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank that the banksdo not believe that the solvency opinion of American AppraisalAssociates and the solvency certificate of Huntsman CFO meet thecondition of the commitment letter.  As a result, the banks do not planto fund the proposed closing of the merger scheduled for this morning.Hexion has said that it will vigorously enforce all of its contractualrights if the banks do not fund their commitments.

It is harder to guess which is a bigger surprise here.  This merger hasbeen very convoluted from the start.  Banks seem to be in the boat ofnot wanting to loan money regardless of terms right now.  Andmulti-billion dollar private equity LBO’s are so 2006 to 2007.

With all of the infighting that has taken place in this merger, almost nothing can come as any shock.

Huntsman shares were trading down about 7% at $11.20 right before the open.  Stay tuned.

Jon C. Ogg
October 28, 2008

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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