Grohe makes high-end bathroom and kitchen fittings
Luxury bathroom fittings maker, Grohe, has agreed to a takeover offer from Japanese building materials company Lixil.
Under the deal Lixil and the Development Bank of Japan have agreed to buy an 87.5% take in the German firm, valuing it at $4.1bn (£2.5bn).
It is the biggest ever takeover of a German firm by a Japanese company.
Grohe is owned by the private equity firm TPG Capital and the private equity business of Credit Suisse.
The German firm employs around nine thousand staff worldwide and has nine factories, including plants in Portugal, Thailand, Canada and China.
Together the two companies will become the world's biggest maker of bathroom and kitchen accessories.
In its most recent earnings announcement Grohe said that sales in the first half of 2013 rose 5% to 730m euros ($987m, £614m).
Lixil president Yoshiaki Fukimori described Grohe as "one of the most well-known brands in the global sanitary market."
Source: BBC News - Business http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24280265#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
