Wrap it up, they’ll take it.
David Rubenstein’s Carlyle Group has won a $3 billion-plus auction for an Illinois packaging company — besting a handful of rivals, The Post has learned.
For the Washington, DC, private-equity firm, the deal to buy ITW’s packaging business, which owns a 40 percent market share, is its second large purchase in less than a month.
In mid-January, Carlyle agreed to buy Johnson & Johnson’s clinical testing division for $4.15 billion, beating out the Blackstone Group in the final round.
In winning ITW’s packaging unit, Carlyle beat out Leon Black’s Apollo Global Management in the final round, sources said.
In recent years, Carlyle has gained a reputation for outbidding its peers. At the same time, its investors seem satisfied with the approach.
For example, Rubenstein’s firm in 2012 outbid its nearest rival, Apollo, by $600 million to acquire DuPont’s auto paints division for roughly $5 billion — before trying to rework the price.
Carlyle in November closed on a new $13 billion US focused buyout fund, similar in size to a $13.7 billion fund it raised in 2008 at the top of the fund-raising market.
Not all its peers have been as successful matching their prior hauls.
And many, too, have had a more difficult time spending their pools of money.
Carlyle is paying nearly a nine-times-EBITDA multiple for the business, and borrowing money that is close to seven times EBITDA, a source said.
That means it is beyond the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s new rule forcing banks not to lend at more than six times EBITDA unless a deal meets certain conditions.
However, this auction started before the new guidelines, and it is believed that Carlyle and its lenders will not need to abide by the new rules.
Carlyle declined to comment.