LI giant Pall Corp. in talks to be acquired, report says
Pall Corp. headquarters in Port Washington on April 30, 2012. Credit: Barry Sloan
Pall Corp., Long Island's second largest public company based on stock market capitalization, is in talks for a possible sale, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
The Port Washington-based maker of filtration and purification systems used in life sciences and industrial applications had a stock market capitalization of $10.6 billion as of the close of trading Monday. Among Long Island's public companies, it ranked second, behind Melville-based health care products distributor Henry Schein Inc., with $11.6 billion.
The Journal reported Danaher Corp., based in Washington, D.C., and Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., of Waltham, Massachusetts, are bidding for the local company and final offers are due at week's end. The report said the price couldn't be determined and that the talks may not lead to a deal.
Shares of Pall closed down 0.21 percent to $99.31 in trading Monday but soared almost 18 percent in early after-hours trading to $117 following publication of The Journal's report.
A Pall representative didn't respond to a request for comment. As of 2012, the company employed about 700 on Long Island.
Richard Eastman, an analyst at Milwaukee-based Robert W. Baird & Co., said Pall operates in a sector that is consolidating and where companies fetch high prices. "Pall's business would be attractive" to either Danaher or Thermo Fisher Scientific, he said.
The acquisition of Pall, at a price well over $10 billion, would dwarf the top three Long Island merger and acquisition deals of 2014, which, combined, were worth about $4 billion. Such a deal also would further deplete Long Island's roster of public companies, shrunken by exit or acquisition of stalwarts like Arrow Electronics, Symbol Technologies and OSI Pharmaceuticals.
Pall was founded in 1946 in a garage in Forest Hills by inventor David B. Pall. The company later moved to East Hills, and then to a 276,000-square-foot headquarters in Port Washington in 2009.
In its fiscal year ended July 31, 2014, Pall had net sales of $2.8 billion and about 10,400 employees.
Ken Schachter covers corporate news, including technology and aerospace, and other business topics for Newsday. He has also worked at The Miami Herald and The Jerusalem Post.
Updated now Newsday travel writer Scott Vogel took the ferry over to Block Island for a weekend of fun.
Updated now Newsday travel writer Scott Vogel took the ferry over to Block Island for a weekend of fun.
