Lixil reaches basic agreement to buy Grohe for $4 billion: Lixil CEO

Japan's Lixil Group Corp <5938.T> has reached a basic agreement to buy Grohe , Europe's biggest bathroom equipment maker, for about 400 billion yen ($4.05 billion), Lixil Chief Executive Yoshiaki Fujimori said on Thursday.

He added that the deal was expected to be announced later in the day.

Fujimori's comments followed a report in the Nikkei business newspaper that Lixil would announce a deal to buy Grohe from TPG Capital and the private equity arm of Credit Suisse on Thursday.

Grohe's owners had also been considering the option of exiting their investment by listing the company on the stock exchange.

The Nikkei said that Lixil had lined up more than 200 billion yen in loans from Japanese banks for a leveraged buyout of Grohe. It added that Lixil would establish a special-purpose company to handle the transaction, to which Lixil would contribute about 130 billion yen while the Development Bank of Japan would contribute about 50 billion yen.

(Reporting by Nathan Layne; Editing by Edmund Klamann and Chris Gallagher)