It was 2004 and America's housing boom was near its height – 2.2m homes were started in the US that year and, if there was one thing they all needed inside and out, it was doors. One main supplier of those: Masonite International, a Canadian company that for 80 years had been in a construction materials business William Mason, its founder, helped develop with his trademarked hardboard.
So it came as little surprise that Masonite caught the eye of the mighty Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, which days before that Christmas won management's approval for it to take over the group. Outside shareholders held out against the New York private equity house and a few months later were won round only by an improvement in the terms to value Masonite at C$3.3bn.
Four years on, with housing markets ravaged by subprime defaults and the wider crisis those triggered, Masonite finally filed this March for bankruptcy protection in the Delaware and Ontario courts. Under the ownership of KKR, which had borrowed $1.5bn from the banks and issued an additional $770m in high-yield bonds to help gain control, it had closed or consolidated two dozen facilities and, from some 15,000 staff, it was down to fewer than 8,500. Last year the group sold only 36m doors, compared with 55m in 2006.
