Cooper Lighting Solutions has distributed a letter to its customers, partners, and other interested parties regarding the previously-announced acquisition by Signify. The acquisition is expected to close Mar. 2, 2020. Cooper, however, is pledging no changes for its customer base.
The Cooper story is a long one for the SSL sector as the company was certainly among the earliest of movers in LED technology. Conglomerate Eaton acquired Cooper Lighting back in 2012 as a part of the acquisition of Cooper Industries. In 2015, Eaton proactively drove a name change for Cooper Lighting to Eaton Lighting.
In the spring of 2019, Eaton announced that it would spin out the lighting business as a publicly-traded company with the name of that organization yet to be determined. At that time, Eaton was asked if it would consider an acquisition, although the company seemed set on the initial public offering (IPO) at that time. Then in October 2019, Signify announced, without prior speculation by anyone, that it would acquire the Eaton Lighting business that we would later discover would revert to the Cooper name.
Just a few weeks ago, Signify announced tepid quarterly financial reults. At the time, Signify said it would close the Cooper acquisition this quarter.
Beginning Mar. 2, the business will be officially named Cooper Lighting Solutions. Cooper has again confirmed that it will maintain existing sales departments, channels, brands, and more. The company allowed that there could be email address changes to come, but in general customers will continue to work with their existing contacts.
Indeed, Cooper went to the level of saying that it will maintain existing tax and banking ID and account numbers so that customers experience no change or inconvenience. Existing purchase orders will remain active. And Cooper will handle the transition of business operations during the weekend of Feb. 28–Mar. 1.
The letter from Cooper was signed by Joe Melchiors, vice president of sales, and Ken Walma, vice president and general manager of business segments and customer experience.
