Global Fastener News

By Dick Callahan

August 16, 1988 FIN – Eskay Screw Products, located in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, and Lake Erie Screw Corp., of Cleveland, Ohio, will soon have a new parent corporation when a transaction is finalized involving their present parent companies.
This transaction, expected to be finalized by November, will create a new entity called TriMas Corp., which will oversee a number of businesses now operated by Masco Industries, of Taylor, Michigan. TriMas is also, as we understand it, in a pretty favorable position for growth, but we’ll get to that shortly, along with some details about how the two fastener companies came to be related.
In the transfer, Masco Industries will sell ten of its divisions to TriMas Corp. in return for about a 50% equity in the new company. The equity is in the form of common stock and a certain amount of subordinate debentures. As part of the transfer, Masco Corporation (which created Masco Industries in a similar move four years ago) will acquire for cash the other 50% of the common stock. Masco Corp. will then spin off a portion of the common stock as a dividend to its shareholders, making TriMas a public corporation.

The divisions TriMas will operate include certain defense, cutting tool, heat treating, and fastener businesses, which represent about $150 million of Masco Industries’ annual sales.

Eskay Screw Products, now a part of Masco Industries, will become a part of TriMas.

According to Brian Campbell who’ll be president of TriMas Corp., Masco Industries, which now has a broadly defined product group, will now be able to focus on its automotive, oil field, and architectural product groups. TriMas will be able to grow as well, he added, because as the result of the transfer, TriMas will initially have about $70 million in cash and a $200-300 million line of bank credit. Campbell says that two initial areas of growth the corporation will consider are in the fastener and cutting tool businesses.

Campbell is a former vice president to Masco Corporation. Campbell had left Masco to form his own company, Campbell Industries, which acquired Lake Erie Screw Corp. in April 1987. Campbell tells FIN that Campbell Industries will effectively change to TriMas Corp., as part of the formation of the new entity. Lake Erie Screw and Eskay Screw, when it is transferred from Masco Industries, will comprise the fastener business group of TriMas.
Campbell, who described Eskay and Lake Erie as two of the best managed fastener companies in the U.S., tells FIN that TriMas will be active in looking for other well-known fastener companies to add to its fastener group. ©1988/2010 Fastener Industry News