Southport Partners Represents Gillette in the Acquisition of Parker Pen
It’s not like Gillette didn’t know about the Parker Pen company.
Gillette owned Waterman, which was a fierce rival in the fine writing instrument market. Gillette wanted both.
From the 1920s to the 1960s, before the development of the ballpoint pen, Parker was either number one or number two in worldwide writing instrument sales.
In 1941 the company developed the most widely used model of fountain pen in history (over $400 million worth of sales in its 30-year history), the Parker 51.
Manufacturing facilities were set up over the years in Canada, United Kingdom, Denmark, France, Mexico, USA, Pakistan, India, Germany, Brazil and Argentina.
A private equity-backed management buyout in 1987 moved the company’s headquarters to Newhaven, East Sussex, England.
When Schroder Ventures was preparing a sale process, Southport Partners worked with Gillette to pre-empt the auction with a compelling $585 million offer.
Although Schroder’s continued to move forward with a sale process, it soon became aparent that no bidders were willing to go up against Gillette.
Nothin’s easy, however.
Bill Clinton had just been elected President, and he announced a tough new approach to anti-trust enforcement.
When the Gillette-Parker pen deal was announced, the Justice Department jumped on it to show the world they were getting tough under Clinton. It was their first action under Clinton.
Their claim: Gillette might monopolize the $40 million market for ‘fine writing instruments’ ($50 – $400 each).
Southport Partners worked with Gillette for months the Justice Department.
Southport Partners generated analyses and documents to show how Gillette could not dominate the very competitive writing instrument market, of which expensive ink pens were just a sliver.
Fortunately, after nearly a year of wrangling, the courts put an end to Justice’s case, ruling that the “fine writing instrument” market was just part of a larger, very competitive writing instrument market.
