WillametteSurrenders To Weyerhaeuser Buyout

After more than three years of acrimonious negotiations, Willamette Industries accepted in principle being acquired by Weyerhaeuser Co. for 56.l billion.

Subject to approval from the boards of both companies. Weyerhaeuser will pay $55.50 per share in cash. 50d a share more than what chairman Steven Rogel called his final offer. Weyerhaeuser also will pay about $1.7 billion in debt and other expenses.

Willamette had rejected the earlier off'er as inadequate and continued its own negotiations for GeorgiaPacific's building products division.

Since Weyerhaeuser had vowed to abandon its bid if willamette consummated a deal with G-P. Willamette's stock price promptly slipped more than 157o.

Soon after, separate shareholders filed suit, charging Willamette with ignoring its fiduciary responsibility to its stockholders, and sought an injunction preventing a deal with G-P.

In addition, 647o of Willamette's

Tribe Buys Washington Mill

The Colville Indian Tribe has completed its acquisition of a shuttered veneer plant in Omak, Wa., for $5.85 million.

The plant, formerly owned by Quality Veneer & Lumber Co., closed | 8 months ago after the company filed for Chapter I I bankruptcy.

The plant will be renamed Colville Indian Power and Veneer and is expected to open March I with between 70 and 120 employees.

The Colville Tribal Enterprise Corp., which already owns a sawmill in Omak as Colville Indian Precision Pine Co., will oversee the operation along with a wood waste-run power plant expected to produce 15 megawatts of electricity.

The Jan. 8 purchase was the culmination of a series of bids and funding requests for the tribe. Last August (see Sept., p. 22) they received $9.6 million toward the funding of the purchase.

About $1.7 million will be spent cleaning up environmental damage on the 386-acre property.

The 80-year-old mill was previously owned by Omak Wood Products, which filed for bankruptcy in 1998.

outstanding shares were tendered into Weyerhaeuser' s $55-a-share offer.

Investors Buying Eel River

A Nevada-based group of investors has agreed to buy Eel River Sawmills, Fortuna, Ca.

The offer came in mid-January, just as Eel River finished its final days of production at Mill A in Fortuna.

Eel River Acquisition Corp. will acquire Eel River's Fortuna plant along with two previously closed mills in Redcrest, Ca., and one in

Alton, Ca., 24,000 acres of timberland and the Fairhaven Power Co. in Fortuna.

"I don't know how the acquisition company is going to run it," said Eel River Sawmill's president Dennis Scott. "I don't think they are buying us not to run us."

Eel River Acquisition's Ray Eckert said plans wouldn't be made public until the purchase was finalized.

Eckert did say that there were specific plans in place: "We've got everything programmed from a corporate logo to how we're going to run (Eel River)."

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