ATK Settles Lawsuit and is Ready for Business

Frank White is free to do business with the ATK brand for the first time since 2004 after the Feb. 12 settlement of a lawsuit with an investment partner.

White, ATK CEO, has been hoping to use the ATK brand in partnership with Korea’s S&T Motors to infiltrate the Harley-Davidson dealer network. Clearing up the suit allows him to move ahead with that project by giving him clear title to the ATK trademark, name, and motorcycle and ATV engines and parts.

In 2004, when ATK purchased Cannondale’s assets – 480 tons of motorcycle and ATV engines, frames and parts – the company entered into a two-part loan with a financial group. Phase 1 of the loan was debt financing to be converted into a Phase 2 stage of equity financing, with the investor assisting in bringing in additional funding. As part of Phase 1, White was required to put up as collateral the ATK name and all of its assets until Phase 2 went into effect. But Phase 2 never materialized and, in 2007, another group – an Oklahoma-based importer/distributor – purchased the note from the original lender.

It was that lender that White could never quite come to amicable terms with to take ATK public, and with which he ultimately entered into a stalemate that had him evidently wanting out of the deal, access to the brand and parts and on to other opportunities, and the partner group wanting its investment back.

Finally, earlier this year, White, knowing the importer/distributor wanted to use some of ATK’s ATV chassis parts for some of their future ATVs, offered to settle the suit by exchanging the parts they wanted to offset debt.

“All debts and claims between the two parties have been resolved,” White told me this morning. “The last two weeks we have been working with the group in Oklahoma in having our assets returned to Centerville, Utah, and last night the last truck was unloaded.”

The lawsuit made times tough for White, with working capital during the past five years supplied by friends and family. “Every time an investor or potential industry manufacturing partner would come to visit ATK these past five years we would need to disclose the fact that we were in litigation and that our name and assets were tied up,” White said. “It’s like being separated from your spouse and no one will get serious with you until you’ve been divorced.”

White says he’ll now move forward with his ATK/S&T project.