South West engineering materials company Versarien is close to securing a \u00a3200,000 deal for the company which was valued at \u00a3150m less than five years ago.<\/p>\n
The graphene specialist has been fighting off crises in recent years and has repeatedly warned it is running out of money.<\/p>\n
This summer it began a process of selling off assets and placing some parts of the business into administration.<\/p>\n
It suffered a further blow in August when a planned joint venture with a Chinese firm was blocked by the Government over national security concerns.<\/p>\n
However Versarien has now revealed it has signed a non-binding heads of terms with an unnamed UK public company for its remaining material assets and subsidiaries.<\/p>\n
The potential acquirer wants to buy Total Carbide and Gnanomat SL, the patent and trademark portfolio held by Versarien, and the graphene production equipment held by Versarien Graphene.<\/p>\n
The deal would be for \u00a3100,000 in cash and approximately \u00a3100,000 in shares in the stock market-listed company. If the deal went through, the buyer would also take on responsibility for the \u00a35.7m Innovate UK loan.<\/p>\n
Versarien’s directors believe the company can continue to operate, with the support of its creditors, at least until the proposed transaction is completed, which is expected by the end of November.<\/p>\n
However, they warned if the deal did not complete “in as short a timeframe as possible, the board may have no alternative but to seek to appoint administrators to Versarien plc”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
UK plc in exclusive talks with cash-plus-shares offer for crisis-hit graphene specialist<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":27327,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,7,120781],"coauthors":[81],"class_list":["post-30717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-deals","category-manufacturing","category-markets","tag-gloucestershire","tag-top-story"],"yoast_head":"\n