Spin Cycle

The Whirlpool Corp. (Benton Harbor, Mich.), the nation’s largest manufacturer of home appliances, has made an unsolicited $1.36 billion bid for Maytag Corp. (Newton, Iowa), the third-largest in the industry.

Two months ago, Maytag had announced an agreement to be sold for $1.13 billion to Ripplewood Holdings (New York), a private equity firm. Following that announcement, Haier Group Co. (Qingdao, China), a major Chinese conglomerate, jumped in with a $1.28 billion bid.

Whirlpool’s bid of $17 a share for Maytag represents a 21 percent premium over Ripplewood’s offer of $14, but includes a mix of cash and stock. Haier’s bid, backed by The Blackstone Group (New York) and Bain Capital (Boston), is for $16 a share in cash.

Each of the interested suitors appears to believe it can turn around the struggling company, which has been bothered in recent years by a growing number of aggressive, low-cost Asian rivals. In a letter to Maytag’s board, Whirlpool chairman and ceo Jeff Fettig wrote: “Together we can achieve substantial efficiencies that will deliver cost savings, increased innovation and better asset utilization.”

Haier is expected to complete its review of Maytag’s confidential records this week and then make a decision about whether to proceed with its bid. Whirlpool’s bid is similarly contingent on it having the chance to review Maytag’s confidential records.

When Haier offered to buy Maytag on June 20, it said it would need several weeks to scour Maytag’s books and operations before completing the deal. Just last week, Maytag said it planned to hold a shareholder vote on Haier’s offer on August 19. In public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday, Maytag said it told Haier’s financial advisers that it expected to complete its own due diligence on the offer by July 22.

Analysts have considered Maytag, the country’s third-largest home appliance manufacturer (after Whirlpool and General Electric’s Louisville-based Consumer & Industrial division) to be a prime takeover candidate for some time because of its heavy cost structure, lack of sales growth and sharply declining profitability. (The company posted a loss of about $9 million on sales of $4.7 billion last year.) Whirlpool, by contrast, enjoyed profits of $406 million last year on revenue of $13.2 billion.