Kimberly-Clark, the global consumer products company, announced Friday it plans to spin off its Roswell-based health care business.
The move would create a publicly traded stand-alone company with $1.6 billion in sales. A Kimberly-Clark spokesman told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Friday that it was too early to say what impact a spinoff would have on the health care unit’s local headquarters or its employees.
“Right now, we are pursuing the spinoff,” spokesman Bob Brand said. “It’s still too early to speculate.”
The approximately 1,200 employees at the Roswell campus, part of a global workforce of about 16,000, include scientists, engineers, marketers, financial analysts, sales and operations employees. The workers produce surgical and infection-prevention products, and medical devices.
The Roswell campus, on Holcomb Bridge Road, is on 98 acres and includes four office buildings and a 9-acre lake.
Kimberly-Clark Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Thomas Falk said the division is no longer a strategic fit with the company, known more for its Kleenex and Scott tissue brands and Huggies, Pull-Ups and Depend disposable adult undergarments.
“This move would allow K-C Health Care to optimize its performance and flexibility to pursue its own value-creation opportunities,” Falk said in a statement. “A spinoff would also allow us to further sharpen our focus on our consumer and K-C Professional brands.”
The company said Joanne Bauer would continue to be based in Roswell as president of global health care if the spinoff ultimately occurs by the end of the third quarter 2014. Bauer, who joined the company in 1981, was part of the original team that launched Depend, and she led the integration of the division’s first acquisition, Tecnol Medical Products.
The company said Robert Abernathy will become chief executive officer of the new health care company. He is currently Kimberly-Clark Group president for Europe, global nonwovens, and continuous improvement and sustainability.
Kimberly-Clark expects that the spinoff would be in the form of a tax-free distribution of 100 percent of the new company’s common stock to Kimberly-Clark shareholders.
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