By Kevin McCauley
Investor relations firm ICR is handling Wall Street for A123 Systems, which turned to China’s Wanxiang Group Corp. for a $450M non-binding strategic investment.
The investment would give Wanxiang an 80 percent stake in A123, America’s top maker of advanced batteries for electronic autos.
That lifeline extended to the Waltham, Mass., company, which has received about $250M in federal grants, has generated national security concerns.
Florida Republican Cliff Stearns rapped the Dept. of Energy and White House for failing to “secure sensitive taxpayer funded intellectual property from being transferred to a foreign adversary.”
The chairman of the Energy and Commerce subcommittee on oversight and investigations wants to make sure the “federal government isn’t an unwitting accomplice to the theft of our own national secrets by providing them with multimillion-dollar government grants and loans.”
Stearns has been the leading Republican critic of the Obama administration for its financing of now belly-up solar panel maker Solyndra.
Wanxiang says the A123 outlay is the “first step” towards its plan to “build on the foundation A123 has established in the U.S. and help expand the company’s capabilities both domestically and internationally.”
The proposed deal must pass muster with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., the body that reviews outlays in U.S. companies that could affect national security.
It comes on the heels on China National Offshore Oil Co.’s $15B bid for Canada’s Nexen, owners of assets in the Gulf of Mexico.
Edelman and ICR handled A123's high-profile initial public offering of 2009.
ICR senior VP Garo Toomajanian is A123’s investor contact. |