Founder’s Veto Slips Away as Mutares Executes Record $450m SABIC Acquisition and Plots Exit Wave

Mutares AG's founder loses 25% veto after April capital raise; company acquires SABIC's thermoplastics for $450M, reports revenue growth, and plans major exits.

The July 3 annual general meeting in Munich will be anything but routine for Mutares. For the first time since its founding, the private-equity holding company will vote without the founder’s blocking minority in place. Robin Laik’s family pool saw its voting rights slip from just over 25% to precisely 24% after the group issued new shares in April to fund its US push. Under German stock corporation law, the 25% threshold grants a veto over qualified majority resolutions. That protection is now gone — even though the Laik family did not sell a single share.

The dilution was a mathematical consequence of the €105m capital increase completed in April. Proceeds from that round are earmarked for expansion, with 80% earmarked for growth. The US is the primary target: Mutares plans to open a second office there and has built an acquisition pipeline that already includes targets with combined revenue of roughly €4.8bn.

But the April capital raise was not the only headline-grabbing financial manoeuvre. Mutares has meanwhile struck the largest acquisition in its history — the takeover of SABIC’s Engineering Thermoplastics (ETP) business for an enterprise value of $450m. The deal, expected to close in the second half of 2026 pending regulatory approvals, adds about $2.5bn in annual revenue, 2,900 employees and eight production sites split between the Americas and Europe. SABIC-ETP is the world’s second-largest polycarbonate manufacturer, the leading ABS producer in the US and the country’s only maker of PBT.

Mutares is using the acquisition to launch a new segment called “Chemicals & Materials”. A second platform, Venator Ultramarine Blue Pigments, is being lined up to broaden the footprint in speciality chemicals and advanced materials. The ETP business derives about 66% of its revenue from the Americas and 34% from Europe, with automotive, construction and consumer goods as its main end markets.

The first-quarter numbers underline the momentum. Group revenue rose 10% year-on-year to nearly €1.68bn, while adjusted EBITDA swung from a loss of €30.1m in the year-ago period to a positive €11.1m. Management has reaffirmed the full-year outlook: revenue between €7.9bn and €9.1bn (up from €6.5bn in 2025) and a holding net profit of up to €200m.

On the divestiture side, the company describes its current exit pipeline as the largest in its history, with multiple processes running in defence, energy and energy infrastructure. Efacec is benefiting from rising demand for resilient power grids and is internally considered a candidate for one of the biggest exits the group has ever executed. NEM Energy booked order intake of more than €500m in the first months of 2026 alone. Magirus, the fire-truck manufacturer acquired in late 2024, has launched a new Defence & Security division and now holds an order backlog of nearly €1bn. Mutares is already exploring an exit for Magirus — either through an initial public offering or a full sale — with the order book alone securing capacity utilisation through 2026.

The share price has responded positively to the operational momentum. Over the past month, the stock has gained roughly 7%, reclaiming its 50-day moving average, and currently trades at €27.15.

At the AGM, the board and supervisory board are proposing a baseline dividend of €2.00 per share, which management explicitly labels a minimum payment. If substantial exits materialise during the year, shareholders can expect an additional performance dividend tied directly to the proceeds from those disposals. The vote will serve as the first practical test of how the company functions without the founder’s formal veto. A smooth approval is widely seen as proof that the holding remains fully governable even with the Laik family’s voting power now below the magic quarter.