Kone eyes $25 billion TK Elevator takeover, largest Finnish acquisition in history

• TK Elevator's private equity owners value the company at $25 billion, according to Bloomberg sources
• A combined Kone–TK Elevator would create a dominant force in a global elevator market with only four major players
• The deal would hand TK Elevator's owners — led by Advent International and Cinven — a lucrative exit from their 2020 leveraged buyout
• Regulatory scrutiny in concentrated European and North American markets could pose serious obstacles to completion

Kone, Finland's elevator and escalator giant, is preparing a bid for Germany's TK Elevator that could close within weeks, Kauppalehti reports, citing Bloomberg sources. TK Elevator's owners — a consortium led by private equity firms Advent International and Cinven — value the company at approximately $25 billion. If completed, it would be the largest industrial acquisition in Finnish corporate history and one of the biggest European cross-border deals in years.

The global elevator market is controlled by four companies: Otis, Schindler, Kone, and TK Elevator. Absorbing TK Elevator would turn Kone from one of four roughly comparable competitors into something closer to a market leader, with a combined installed base generating decades of high-margin service and maintenance revenue. That recurring revenue stream — not new installations — is where the real money is in the elevator business, and a merged entity would control an enormous share of it in both Europe and North America.

The question is who benefits. TK Elevator was carved out of ThyssenKrupp in 2020 in a leveraged buyout valued at around €17 billion. Five years later, the private equity consortium is looking for an exit at a price that represents a substantial markup. Private equity owners selling to a publicly traded industrial buyer is a well-established pattern: the PE firms lock in their returns, and the acquiring company's shareholders absorb the integration risk, the debt load, and the regulatory uncertainty. Kone's current market capitalisation sits around €25 billion — meaning it would, in effect, be acquiring a company roughly its own size.

Financing a deal of this magnitude would almost certainly require a combination of debt, equity, and possibly asset disposals. Kone has historically maintained a conservative balance sheet, but a $25 billion acquisition would transform that profile overnight. The Herlin family, which controls Kone through its holding company Antti Herlin's stakes, would need to accept significant dilution or leverage — or both.

Then there is the regulatory picture. Competition authorities in the EU and the United States blocked or forced major concessions in previous elevator industry consolidation attempts. When Kone tried to acquire ThyssenKrupp's elevator division in 2019–2020, the European Commission raised serious concerns about market concentration. The deal never materialised — the business went to the PE consortium instead. Whether regulators have changed their assessment in five years, or whether Kone has structured the current approach to address previous objections, will determine if the transaction proceeds at all.

Kone has spent decades building a reputation as one of Finland's most disciplined industrial companies — steady growth, high margins, minimal drama. A $25 billion acquisition financed at a price set by private equity sellers would be a sharp departure from that identity. The PE consortium bought TK Elevator for €17 billion and now wants $25 billion. Somebody is getting a good deal, and it is not ambiguous which side of the table they are sitting on.

Sources: Kauppalehti, Bloomberg