The deal was apparently sealed on 7th August in the Milan office of La Compagnia Finanziaria, an affiliate of Simmons & Simmons. This international legal firm has been advising Fantuzzi group since September 2004 when it was retained to advise on its debt restructuring and bond refinancing.

Terex, the Westport, Connecticut-based multinational, reportedly beat off a bid from Konecranes. The sale process elicited interest from 10 different parties, including three private equity funds.

Another industrial bidder was Manitowoc. Curiously, Kalmar is also mentioned as a bidder, although it is hard to see how such a deal could have got past the competition authorities, particularly given the furore last year over its now abandoned deal to buy CVS Ferrari, which is a much smaller player in the overall container handling equipment market than Fantuzzi group.

The price for the deal, which includes the manufacturing facilities in Italy, Noell straddle carriers in Wuerzburg, Germany and the 70% share of the Noell China crane and heavy lift truck assembly plant in Shanghai, plus all the intellectual property rights, trademarks and references, is understood to be E250M.

The main Italian facilities are at Lentigione di Brescello in Reggio Emilia (reach stackers and mast trucks) and at Monfalcone in Gorizia on the adriatic coast (mobile harbour crane erection plant). The crane design and engineering centre is at the historic Reggiane crane plant at Via Agosti in the city of Reggio Emilia.

Terex is taking over this, too, but not the rest of the 270,000 m2 property. This will be sold separately by Fantuzzi Immobiliare, although it is understood that the city has an interest in it.

Mr Luciano Fantuzzi will not remain a minority shareholder and the E250M deal includes a payment for his shares.

On top of the E250M, it is understood that Terex will meet the E55M final tranche of the bond that fell due on 16 July. Last week bondholders met in London to discuss a proposal from Fantuzzi group to postpone the payment until January 2009. Neither Mr Fantuzzi nor group managing director Renato Conti were able to attend, as they were tied up in the sale talks, but in any event only 40% of the creditors were represented – 10% short of the 50% quorum required – so no decision was taken.

Instead they agreed to meet again at the end of August with the quorum reduced to 25%. It seems that the London meeting was in favour of Fantuzzi’s proposal, so it is not clear whether that deferment would extend to Terex, or whether Terex would prefer to settle it now and avoid extra interest.

Terex is active in construction cranes and equipment, mining and extraction equipment, lifting plant, cargo logistics, utilities, etc. The takeover is thus almost entirely complementary, as the only area of product overlap is reach stackers – Terex-PPM in France.

The scale of Fantuzzi’s reach stacker/heavy mast truck production is not known, although Terex-PPM turned out 120 reach stackers in 2007, so Terex and Fantuzzi combined would easily be the global number 2 in this field behind Kalmar.

For 2Q/08 Terex turned in net sales of US$2.936B and net income of US$236.3M, up by 25.3% and 39.8% respectively on the figures for 2Q/2007. The company told investors that the results reflected recent acquisitions and the export stimulus provided by the low value of the US dollar. Terex had net sales of US$9.1B in 2007.