- Houston's MRC Global (NYSE:MRC -5.2%) has a deal to sell its Oil Country Tubular Goods business to Sooner Pipe for $48M, in a move that cuts its exposure to upstream drilling volatility.
- Sooner Pipe is a unit of Marubeni-Itochu Tubulars America. Sales at the OCTG unit were about $305M last year. MRC Global expects to take a pretax charge of $5M for its Q4 related to the deal.
- MRC Global plans to refocus on its higher margin product lines, particularly valve, valve automation and instrumentation businesses. The deal's expected to close in Q1.