Australian investment company Washington H. Soul Pattinson (Soul Patts) and building materials manufacturer Brickworks will merge into a company worth $9bn, The Wall Street Journal reports.
The companies have held stakes in each other since 1969 to protect against hostile takeovers, but will now cancel them and form a single holding company. Soul Patts owns 43% of Brickworks, and Brickworks owns 26% of Soul Patts.
Soul Patts will play a leading role in the new entity, which will take on the name Washington H. Soul Pattinson. It will be led by current Soul Patts executive Todd Barlow.
“The combined business will be very well diversified and will be in a stronger position to deliver long-term value to all shareholders,” the newspaper quoted him as saying.
The final size of the two companies’ stakes in the new structure has yet to be determined, but Soul Patts will receive 71 per cent of the new shares issued to raise A$550 million ($354 million).
At the same time, Soul Patts shareholders will receive shares in the new holding in proportion to each other, with Brickworks shareholders receiving 0.82 securities for each of their shares.
Soul Patts went public in 1903 as a drugstore operator. As of 31 January 2025, it had $12.1 billion in assets. Nearly half of its portfolio is in strategic equity investments, including securities of coal miner New Hope and telecoms companies Tuas and TPG Telecom.
Brickworks was founded in 1934.
The combined company will be among Australia’s 40 largest and comparable in capitalisation to Qantas Airways.
Shares of Soul Patts rose by 16.4 per cent at the end of trading on Monday, Brickworks – by 27.6 per cent.