Things got personal Monday in the fight between Huntsman Corp. and Apollo Management LP as The Woodlands, Texas, chemical company announced it has sued Apollo in state court in Conroe, Texas, and has named Apollo founders Leon Black (pictured) and Joshua Harris for good measure. Indeed, Black and Harris are the first-named defendants.
Continue reading below
Huntsman is asking for $3 billion in damages for fraud and tortuous interference, claiming that Apollo fraudulently induced Huntsman to break a $9.6 billion deal to be acquired by Basell Holdings NV and sign up to be acquired by Apollo portfolio company Hexion Specialty Chemical Inc. instead. Hexion is not named as a defendant in Huntsman's suit in Texas.
The suit, Huntsman Corp. v. Black, comes five days after Apollo and Hexion sued Huntsman in Delaware Chancery Court, seeking a ruling that its $10.6 billion deal to buy Huntsman is dead because of Huntsman's deteriorating financial results, which Hexion contends have made the takeover unfinanceable. Apollo also asked for a ruling in Delaware that its liability is capped at $325 million, suggesting that Huntsman had already threatened to go after Apollo as well as Hexion if the deal broke down.
"It is now clear that, to get Huntsman to terminate its contract with Basell, Apollo falsely represented to Huntsman its commitment to closing a merger with Hexion at $28 per share, when it really intended all along to then delay the process and create enough problems with the transaction to bring us back to the table at a lower price," Huntsman CEO and president Peter Huntsman said in a statement. "We intend to pursue every available legal action required to hold Apollo, Black and Harris responsible for their ruinous actions."
Harry M. Reasoner of Vinson & Elkins LLP is lead counsel for Huntsman on the suit.
See TheDeal.com and The Daily Deal for a full story later. -
John E. Morris
