Kentz suitor M+W no longer pursuing deal

German based M+W Group has announced it is no longer pursuing a deal to acquire Irish engineering firm Kentz.

M+W had had an indicative offer of some £700 million (€820 million) for Kentz rejected in July and the company today said it did not intend to return with a new bid.

Amec, a British rival of Kentz, had a similarly sized offer for the Clonmel-headquartered company rejected this summer.

Kentz , which specialises in helping larger industrial customers to develop oilfields and gasfields, mines and other factory sites, said the offers undervalued the company.

Another rumoured suitor, SNC-Lavalin, is yet to lodge a bid.

The development means some of Kentz’s senior Irish-based executives will not benefit, or may have to wait, for a cash-windfall.

Ed Power, the company's Waterford-educated chief financial officer, has a stake in the company of just under 0.9 per cent, and would have been in line for a payment of about £6 million had the deal gone ahead.

Kentz last month reported a pre-tax profit of $52.7 million (up 3 per cent) and raised its dividend by 20 per cent to 6.6 cents.

The company began life in 1919 as a local electrical contractor in Tipperary. It relaunched itself as an international oil services group in the 1970s. After a financial collapse and restructuring that attracted backing from Malaysian investors in the 1990s, the company floated on the Aim in London in 2008 before progressing to London's main list in 2011.