Did you hear?… Polartec LLC completes acquisition of Malden Mills
Polartec LLC completed the acquisition of Malden Mills Industries' assets on Mar. 14, effectively ending a financially challenged saga that began in 2003 when an exit from Chapter 11 ended three generations of Feuerstein-family control and put the company in the hands of a lender, GE Capital Corp.
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Polartec LLC completed the acquisition of Malden Mills Industries’ assets on Mar. 14, effectively ending a financially challenged saga that began in 2003 when an exit from Chapter 11 ended three generations of Feuerstein-family control and put the company in the hands of a lender, GE Capital Corp.
Polartec LLC is a Delaware-registered corporation formed on Feb. 22, 2007, for the sole purpose of acquiring the assets and none of the liabilities of Malden. Following the successful bid of Philadelphia-based Chrysalis Capital Partners to acquire the assets of Malden for $44 million in late February, Malden moved to convert its original Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization filing into a Chapter 7 liquidation on Mar. 8.
When Chrysalis was awarded the bid to acquire Malden’s assets, it was the sole remaining bidder among 36, which had, since Malden first gave notice of its assets being for sale on Jan. 10, 2007, expressed an interest in the company — click here to read our January story.
Polartec LLC will continue manufacturing operations at its plants in Lawrence and Methuen, Mass., Hudson, N.H., and Shanghai, China. Michael Spillane, Malden’s CEO for the last three years, is the new CEO of Polartec LLC. The balance of the management team from Malden will transition to their respective positions within the new company.
Greg Segall, now the chairman of Polartec LLC, is also a managing partner of Chrysalis Capital Partners.
SNEWS® View: Good for Spillane and the Polartec team, and good for Segall. A little known fact is that as the chairman and managing director of what was known as the Chrysalis Management Group in 2003, Segall was named to the board of directors of Malden Mills when it emerged from bankruptcy on Oct. 17, 2003. Insiders tell us that Segall, who was instrumental in the hiring of Spillane in 2004, resigned from the board in late 2005, and set in motion plans to eventually acquire control of Malden when secured lender, GE Capital Corp., put the company up for sale.