Jim McColl's Clyde Blowers has defied the credit squeeze to buy four businesses from a US corporation in a massive $1bn (£565m) deal that promises to treble the size of Glasgow-based Clyde Pumps.

Jim McColl's Clyde Blowers has defied the credit squeeze to buy four businesses from a US corporation in a massive $1bn (£565m) deal that promises to treble the size of Glasgow-based Clyde Pumps.

His Clyde Blowers team has injected its own wealth into a private equity fund that has attracted over £200m from four backers including Pantheon Ventures and Bank of Scotland, with over £350m of debt raised from Bank of Scotland, Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays and HSBC completing the innovative package. Asked what it took to raise the fund, McColl said: "It means we are skint."

The expansion takes the Clyde Blowers portfolio of companies from five to nine, almost doubles employees to 5000, and boosts turnover from £700m to £1.2bn.

McColl last year rescued the 600 jobs at Weir Pumps, acquiring a business due to be closed and launching it as Clyde Pumps into India and China. Now he is to merge it with Michigan-based Union Pumps which employs 730 at 10 sites in six countries.

He said: "When we bought Clyde Pumps part of our strategy was (to say) what do we need to do with it? We wanted to buy a company in the States, we identified Union Pumps as the perfect fit."

But the seller Textron, a defence and aviation manufacturer and the 202nd biggest corporation in the US, told McColl a year ago it would not separate Union from the rest of its fluid and power division.

McColl said: "I started talking to Textron last September before the credit crunch, the whole thing was changing by the day and by the week, and holding it together was quite a challenge.

"They would not agree to sell the pumps business on its own out of this group of four - I said we will buy the four."

The division includes two UK companies, David Brown Gear Systems in Yorkshire and David Brown Hydraulics in Dorset, and Swiss group Maag Pumps, between them employing over 1500 at 36 locations around the world.

"They are engaged in the same sort of industries that we have experience in - power, metals, minerals, oil and gas," McColl said. "They fit well with our expertise and market knowledge.

"At the same time we were trying to raise a fund to do just this and build a portfolio of seven or eight companies. In looking for an add-on for the pumps business we found three other businesses to add to our portfolio - it was a lucky strike."

On the future for Clyde Pumps, he said: "We are fully expecting the Glasgow business over the next three years to treble in size."

Union had an engineering office in Bangalore that would help the group to pool resources for all its businesses, and particularly pumps, McColl said, but that would not mean downsizing in Glasgow, where numbers were already up to 640.

"It will go up because we will have much more exposure to the different markets we are serving and the Glasgow business has got some very good technology-led product."

The Clyde Blowers Capital Fund II, which aims to back further deals, has attracted Boston-based HarbourVest Partners and Pantheon Ventures of the UK as lead investors, alongside Bank of Scotland and Swiss-based LGT Group.

Peter Wilson, HarbourVest's managing director, said: "The progress made at Clyde Pumps over the past 12 months is testament to the operational skills that will be brought to bear on the newly acquired companies, and we see the deal as a groundbreaking portfolio transaction bringing together outstand-ing industrial expertise with private equity capital."

McColl said: "I am absolutely delighted to sign a deal of this magnitude, especially in the current economic climate. We are talking a total value of $1bn, including additional working capital, bonding facilities, the integration with Union Pumps of the Weir Pumps business, and payment of up to $645m to Textron.

"It is remarkable, and testament to the growing strength of Clyde Blowers as a global company that we have been able to put together such a deal at this time."