Air Products pulls offer for Yingde

Air Products has withdrawn its offer for the Chinese industrial gas supplier Yingde Gases, saying that it wasn’t in its own best interests to pursue the deal. The company made the offer, worth about $1.3 billion, in January. If successful, the purchase would have been the rare takeover of a large Chinese chemical maker by a U.S. firm. Yingde has been suffering from squabbling among directors on its board. This abated last month when the company’s founders agreed to sell their combined 42% stake to the private equity firm PAG Asia Capital, which is now a likely buyer of the entire company.