Home theater audio company Sound United said Friday that it’s previously reported plan to acquire Onkyo Corp.’s consumer audio division and along with it certain distribution rights to the Onkyo, Integra, Pioneer and Pioneer Elite home AV brands has been terminated.
The acquisition effort that surfaced in mid-May fell apart after failing to meet unspecified “conditions,” as Sound United said it cautioned about in the deal’s original announcement.
“At this point, we have mutually agreed that it is in the best interest of both organizations to terminate the proposed acquisition,” read a Sound United statement on the agreement. “After months of rigorous work and negotiations, it became apparent that all of the necessary closing conditions could not be satisfactorily achieved.”
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The termination statement said “completion of the transaction was subject to several conditions, including the finalization of all definitive agreements, completion of satisfactory due diligence, securing of committed financing and various other required approvals.”
When the acquisition plan was first announced, Onkyo Corp. issued a statement clarifing that the agreement consisted of a non-binding “term sheet to transfer its Home AV business to Sound United” and enabled both companies to “accelerate negotiations of definitive terms and agreements to close the deal.”
Under the now defunct deal, Onkyo Corp. was “to retain the rights to the Pioneer and Onkyo brands for their Digital Life and Embedded Audio businesses,” while Sound United acquired all worldwide third-party distribution agreements under which the premium audio products were sold.
At the time it was announced that distribution by Onkyo USA in the Americas and Aqipa in Europe was unaffected.
Representatives of Onkyo Corp and Onkyo USA did not return requests for comment as this was posted.
Despite the announcement, Sound United said it will continue to pursue its mission of bringing “joy to the world through sound” using “organic growth with our existing brands and through opportunistic acquisitions which allow us to better serve the consumer.”
Sound United is a DEI Holdings company, a portfolio company of private equity firm Charlesbank Capital Partners. Sound United has amassed a stable of performance audio brands including Denon, Marantz, Polk Audio, Classé, Definitive Technology, Polk BOOM, HE OS, and Boston Acoustics. The Onkyo brands would have given the company a large percentage of the world’s top home theater audio brands.
By Greg Tarr
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