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Tomkins reportedly to sell Smith & Wesson

Sale to undisclosed buyer could raise up to $161.6m

By Reuters, 1/3/2000

LONDON – British-based ”guns-to-buns” conglomerate Tomkins PLC has decided
to sell US handgun maker Smith & Wesson, the Financial Mail on Sunday newspaper
reported.

Springfield, Mass.-based Smith & Wesson, one of the oldest and most well-known
small arms makers in the world, is the ”guns” part of a conglomerate that includes
a car parts manufacturer and a bread maker.

The newspaper, citing sources close to the company, said the sale to an undisclosed
buyer could raise as much as 100 million pounds ($161.6 million).

A Tomkins spokesman said the company had no comment.

Tomkins’s reported plans to sell Smith & Wesson follow news late last year of a
possible sale by BAE Systems PLC of German small arms maker Heckler & Koch to US
gun maker Colt for about $100 million.

Tomkins’s share price has fallen 29 percent in the last year and underperformed the
FTSE by 42 percent, prompting Tomkins to announce in July it would spin off early
this year its European food operations, which include Hovis breads, Bisto gravy,
Mr. Kipling cakes, and Robertson’s jam.

Tomkins said then it wanted to focus on its industrial and automotive operations.

But the Financial Mail said the prospect of class-action lawsuits against gun makers
in the United States could block any sale of Smith & Wesson.

”Tomkins will [sell Smith & Wesson] if it can, but until the lawsuits are settled
it may be difficult to sell,” the source close to Tomkins was quoted as saying.

The Clinton administration said in early December it would file a class-action
lawsuit against the gun industry in 2000 unless manufacturers agreed to make
major changes in the way they market and distribute guns.

Administration officials said the US Department of Housing and Urban Development is
readying a lawsuit on behalf of 3,200 public housing authorities around the country
to recover the costs associated with gun violence, estimated at around $1 billion a
year.

Twenty-eight cities, including Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, already have
sued makers of handguns to get reimbursement for municipal spending related to gun
violence – on police and emergency medical services, for example.

The 144-year-old Smith & Wesson company is seen as one of those most at risk of having
to pay damages from the lawsuits because it makes large numbers of handguns, some of
which find their way into the hands of criminals who kill close to 100 people in the
United States every year.

This story ran on page A07 of the Boston Globe on 1/3/2000.
? Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company.