NORDAM gets investment to bail out of bankruptcy

The NORDAM Group Inc. in Tulsa has received financial support from a Washington, D.C.-based equity firm in helping the aerospace manufacturer get out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The Siegfried family will keep its 50-year ownership of the business but Carlyle Strategic Partners IV L.P. gained a 45 percent ownership of the company. NORDAM filed for bankrutpcy protection in July of 2018.

NORDAM CEO Meredith Siegfriend Madden made the announcement this week.

“It is important to us to keep control of the business,” Madden said from her office at the company’s Interiors & Structures Division. “It’s who we are. We love this company. We feel responsible for our stakeholders. So we made the decision we were going to go out in a process to bring in a partner, but we wanted to maintain control.

The investment is expected to close in the first half of this year but it still needs approval from the bankruptcy court as well as approval of the usual closing conditions.

“It’s sort of interesting. Private equity companies normally, especially big ones like this, don’t say, ‘I’m going to let you run the business.’ So this was a big deal.”

The Carlyle Group has $216 billion of assets under management across 343 investment vehicles. Founded in 1987 in Washington, D.C., it has more than 1,650 professionals operating in 31 offices in North America, South America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Australia.

“Carlyle is sort of the gold standard in private equity,” Madden said. “They are well-known. They have a great reputation in the industry, not only in private equity but in the aerospace industry. No. 1, that was important.

“But the other thing for us is that it’s about people and who’s on the other side of the deal. So the people we were working with we felt completely comfortable with: honest, trustworthy. That’s also very critical.”