Waste Control Specialists is still seeing interest from other potential buyers in the wake of its foiled merger with rival EnergySolutions, a company spokesman said last week.
“People and entities are still looking at it and we anticipate there will be new ownership at some point,” WCS spokesman Chuck McDonald said by telephone.
McDonald said he could not discuss additional details, including the identities of possible buyers and the timeline for a new deal. He declined to discuss rumors that Paul Foster, a Texas oil and gas billionaire, had considered buying Waste Control Specialists but decided against it given his lack of familiarity with the company’s business.
Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists is owned by holding company Valhi Inc., and primarily operates a facility in West Texas for disposal of government and commercial waste, including low-level radioactive waste. Valhi agreed in November 2015 to sell WCS for $367 million to Salt Lake City-based EnergySolutions, but the U.S. Department of Justice sued and a federal judge in June blocked the deal on antitrust grounds.
Since then, a number of companies have been rumored to be interested in acquiring Waste Control Specialists. However, a deal has not materialized – even as WCS President and CEO Rod Baltzer reportedly said at an industry event in October that an announcement was forthcoming by the end of the month.
Valhi has acknowledged that it could be forced to close its financially struggling subsidiary if there is no buyout.
Word is that interested parties are still out there, but names are hard to come by, one source told Weapons Complex Morning Briefing on Friday. “Everybody seems optimistic,” the source said.
