Blackstone Buys Gates

Gates Corp. is being sold for $5.4 billion to The Blackstone Group private equity firm.

Gates is a Denver-based maker of belts and hoses for passenger and commercial vehicles. The $2.9 billion company is part of the U.K.'s Tomkins plc, which was acquired for $5 billion in 2010 by the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and private equity firm Onex Corp.

Tomkins' owners have sold off seven other divisions of the company for a combined $2.5 billion over the past four years. They expect to complete the Gates sales later this year.

Gates, which filed for an initial public offering in December, generates about $2.9 billion in sales annually through operations in more than 120 countries.