American Industrial Partners Acquires Steel Ball Manufacturer Moly-Cop

Ropes & Gray represented private equity firm American Industrial Partners in its agreement to acquire the entities comprising Australia-based Arrium Mining Consumables Division (Moly-Cop) from Arrium for $1.23 billion.

Moly-Cop is the largest supplier of forged steel grinding media by sales volumes and the largest supplier globally by production capacity. American Industrial Partners is a middle-market private equity firm that invests in industrial businesses serving domestic and global markets. The transaction was announced Nov. 4 and is expected to close in early 2017.

The announcement follows a competitive dual-track divestment process over a five-month period that simultaneously considered an initial public offering of Moly-Cop on the Australian Securities Exchange and a broad trade sale process.

The Ropes & Gray team included private equity partner Daniel Evans (New York); finance partner Stefanie Birkmann (New York); tax partner Lee Allison (New York); tax associate Tom Spera (Boston); and corporate associate Lucy Corrigan (New York).