Rio May Get Bids From Carlyle, TPG for Aerospace Unit

　　Aug. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Carlyle Group, TPG Inc. and Apollo Management LP may bid for Rio Tinto Group Plc's aeronautics and automotive unit as the mining company tries to sell assets and repel BHP Billiton Ltd.'s hostile takeover offer. 　　Rio is seeking offers for Alcan Engineered Products, which it values at about $6 billion, by the middle of next month, four people close to the talks said. Deutsche Bank AG and Rothschild are managing the sale, said the people, who declined to be identified because the talks are confidential. The company supplies customized alloys for aircraft such as Airbus SAS's A380. 　　Rio Tinto, the world's second-largest mining company, said in November it may sell as much as $30 billion of assets to reduce the $45 billion debt it raised to buy Canadian aluminum maker Alcan Inc. in August 2007. London-based Rio, seeking to rebuff BHP Billiton's $139 billion offer, may struggle to get its target price for the aerospace unit as leveraged buyout firms find it harder to raise debt financing for takeovers. 　　"The sale may be challenging as the share of aluminum components is decreasing in the making of new-generation aircraft and access to credit has tightened,'' Pierre Boucheny, an aeronautics analyst at Landsbanki Kepler in Paris, said. 　　Rio Tinto plans to dispose of $10 billion worth of assets this year, of which $3 billion have already been sold, Nick Cobban, a London-based spokesman for the company, said in a phone interview today. Alcan Engineered Products is one of the units being considered for sale, he added. He declined to give more details on the sale's progress. The miner rejected a sweetened offer from BHP in February, saying it undervalued the company. 　　French Partners 　　New York-based Apollo teamed up with French insurer Axa SA's private equity unit and has also invited French state-owned investment company Caisse des Depots et Consignations to join their group, the people said. Carlyle is working with French investment firm Eurazeo SA. Officials at the LBO firms declined to comment. 　　Christel Bories, chief executive officer of Paris-based Alcan Engineered Products, plans to remain with the company after a buyout, the people said. Bories wasn't immediately available to comment. 　　Banks in Europe have curtailed lending for buyouts as they try to unload as much as 80 billion euros ($124 billion) of loans provided to previous deals, forcing lower bids for some takeovers and killing others. The firms have announced $178 billion of deals so far this year, less than a third of the $617 billion of takeovers they led in the same period in 2007, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. 　　Nexans 　　Separately, Nexans SA, the world's biggest producer of cables and wires, plans to make an offer for Alcan Engineered Products's cable unit, Chief Executive Officer Gerard Hauser said July 24. Alcan Cable, which is based in Atlanta, makes aluminum cable, rod and strip products in five plants in North America. 　　Alcan Engineered Products is Europe's largest supplier of extruded aluminum parts and plates to the aerospace industry. The unit had a profit before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization of $567 million on revenue of $7.1 billion in 2006, the most recent period available on the unit's Web site. The company employs 15,000 at its 55 factories in Europe and North America. The unit took over some of Pechiney SA's French factories when parent Alcan acquired the aluminum maker in 2003. 　　French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde said she would track the sale with ``extreme vigilance'' in an interview with French newspaper La Tribune Nov. 11. Rio Tinto had made commitments relating to the maintenance of research and development in France and security of supplies to the defense and aeronautics industries, she told the daily newspaper.