My colleague Nigel Davis is bemused by the new advertising campaign from Evonik.
We're not certain in the ICIS London office (he writes) - and neither is our correspondent in Frankfurt for that matter - whether the latest copy from Evonik's advertising agency, created to announce the CVC stock purchase, is a joke.
It shows a locust with a smile. The caption is "Freuschrecke, Hopperus investorus". It's a pun on the German word Heuschrecke (locust/grasshopper), and freuen (happy).
The message at the foot of the ad is: "We are looking forward to a successful future with our new partner CVC".
It'll be interesting to see how this translates into English if they want to place the advert in magazines like ICIS Chemical Business, our German correspondent says.
For Nigel's full article on ICIS news on the Evonik IPO, click here.
from Dede Willliams, ICB's correspondent in Germany
Hi Barbara,
It looks like the advertisement is real. I've seen references to it on several advertising industry websites in the meantime. I'll have a look at the German papers this weekend and keep you posted.
To call this happy little insect a grasshopper is to miss the pun. Of course, locust is a kind of grasshopper - according to Webster's ditionary"a migratory grasshopper often traveling in great swarms and destroying nearly all vegetation in areas visited."
What's supposed to be funny, a play on words that undoubtedly will only work in German, is that the former German minister of labor once likened private equity investors to a "plague of locusts" descending on the country and gobbling up all of its companies.
Since then (I have done previous stories referring to it), there has been a raging debate about the virtues (or lack of virtues) of the PE branch (and I don't mean polyethylene). PE investors have colloquially been known as "Heuschrecken." Freuschrecken means that Evonik is happy to have such a friendly (benign) one on board.
The company is quite obviously trying to counter what could be negative fallout from selling a blocking minority to a "locust," especially as Evonik (and CVC) will have the "patriotic duty" of paying liabilities resulting from the to-be-phased out coal mining industry.
That is the purpose of this whole exercise, to repay mining damage. RAG was the holding company for all the German mining activities and through a convoluted deal that I won't go into - it's all in the archives - Degussa with its profit-generating potential was, in effect, taken "hostage" to fund the maneuver.
While acknowledging that it might have to scuttle the planned IPO, Evonik hinted that it would seek a "strategic" rather than PE investor for the company. There were no takers, except for Lanxess, an idea much joked about (the tail wagging the dog). Lanxess CEO Axel Heitmann did have the backing of the state government, however.
Maybe too much info - but there it is in a (large) nutshell!
Dede
PS: My take on the takeover will appear in Nigel's lnsight on Monday.
It's true. I've seen the ads!
For Dede's further analysis on the Evonik and CVC saga, see her articles on www.icis.com: http://www.icis.com/Articles/2008/06/09/9130907/INSIGHT-Evonik-and-CVC-a-win-win-partnership.html
http://www.icis.com/Articles/2008/06/16/9132097/Market-Intelligence-Is-Evonik-and-CVC-a-win-win.html