On August 14, 2026, after a seven-day trial, the US District Court for the Southern District of New York granted the Federal Trade Commission a permanent injunction blocking Henkel AG & Co. KGaA’s proposed $725 million acquisition of the Liquid Nails brand from private-equity firm American Industrial Partners.
The FTC had challenged the transaction in December 2025, alleging that combining Loctite — the industry-leading construction adhesive brand owned by Henkel — with its closest competitor, Liquid Nails, would eliminate head-to-head rivalry in the US construction-adhesives market, leading to higher prices, lower quality, and reduced innovation to the detriment of American consumers.
Beyond the substantive antitrust holding, the decision marks the FTC’s new procedural approach of seeking permanent injunctions in federal court to block anticompetitive mergers outright, rather than continuing to full administrative proceedings before the Commission.
The ruling reinforces the current merger-enforcement posture in horizontal deals involving branded consumer and construction products, and is a useful precedent for advising on deal structure, remedy design, and litigation risk in transactions with meaningful US antitrust exposure.
Source: Federal Trade Commission