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...But J&J took it a step further, by filing not the whole $350bn company but a contrived subsidiary. The company had said it would pay up to $60bn of liability....
...The settlement payments for Aearo and PFAS are structured to pay out over several years....
...The combat earplugs at the centre of the litigation were made by Aearo Technologies, a company 3M acquired in 2008 for $1.2bn....
...However, the world’s biggest healthcare products company responded by enabling a subsidiary LTL Management to refile within hours of the dismissal....
...“Aearo Entities’ petitions were anything but fatally premature,” said Judge Graham....
...claimed earplugs supplied by a subsidiary to the US Army had failed to protect them from hearing loss. 3M was forced into a $6bn settlement after a federal judge in June overturned its attempt to put its Aearo...
...In the instance of Aearo, 3M is trying a controversial strategy to ring fence the potential liability even as it pledges to fund the entire cost of settlements....
...The subsidiary, Aearo, along with 3M faced more than 200,000 individual lawsuits over earplugs that Aearo manufactured that allegedly caused hearing loss among US armed services members....
...It has put $1bn in Aearo’s pockets to fund the potential payouts on claims....
...Aearo in 2008 in a deal valued at $1.2bn....
...The company has tapped elite law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to advise on its spin-off, and retained both Kirkland and White & Case to oversee Aearo’s bankruptcy proceedings....
...And last month 3M placed its Aearo subsidiary into Chapter 11 in a bid to resolve hundreds of thousands of claims linked to allegedly defective earplugs....
...The bankruptcy filing by 3M’s Aearo Technologies marks the latest in a series of controversial bankruptcy manoeuvres deployed by US companies, which legal experts say typically halt cases, aim to cap future...
...Permira is keen to repeat the success it enjoyed on its investment in Aearo Technologies, the US maker of protective equipment, which it bought for $765m in March 2006 and sold less than two years later...
...The deal is the fourth exit of the year for Permira, which has also made healthy profits by selling its stakes in Intelsat, the satellite operator, Debitel, the German mobile phone operator, and Aearo Technologies...
...However, he added it was in line with the firm’s strategy of investing in international companies with a strong European presence....
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