Westlake Chemical (Houston, Texas / USA; www.westlakechemical.com) has increased its offer for chlorovinyls producer Georgia Gulf (Atlanta / USA; www.ggc.com) to USD 35/share but that offer, too, has been rejected. The new offer represents a 17% increase on Westlake’s previous offer of USD 30/share, which valued Georgia Gulf at about USD 1 bn – see Plasteurope.com of 17.01.2012.

Paul Carrico, Georgia Gulf’s president and CEO, said the USD 35/share offer “does not represent an appropriate price for us to discuss the sale of Georgia Gulf on a one-off basis”. Georgia Gulf has “a significant ability to leverage improving global PVC demand and access to comparatively low-cost US shale gas,” he continued. “We believe the company can produce value in the near term substantially superior to recent trading prices for Georgia Gulf stock,” Carrico added.

In its new offer, Westlake said it was willing to pay a portion of the merger consideration in Westlake common stock. It also said that, to help achieve a mutually beneficial transaction, it has decided not to nominate director candidates for Georgia Gulf’s 2012 annual meeting of stockholders.

Albert Chao, Westlake’s president and CEO, stated: “Given marketplace uncertainties and the nature of the industry, we believe Georgia Gulf's standalone prospects as an unintegrated PVC producer carry significantly greater risks than the certainty we are offering. We believe a combined company – with captive ethylene capacity, increased scale, better costs and a robust balance sheet – would be better able to overcome these challenges."