Sale of Commercial Cleaning Subsidiary Company
The Company
This Commercial Cleaning Services Company provides a full range of cleaning services to over 200 businesses in London, the South and the South West of England. The company was part of a Group of companies and has its operational headquarters in Salisbury.
The company had a very clear strategy of focusing on a large number of smaller enterprises rather than being overly reliant on a handful of larger ones. This gave the business a core strength and stability and added to this it had a very desirable level of contracted revenue with a good level of profitability.
Click here for a Business Summary.
The Situation
The decision to sell was prompted by the resignation of the managing director which resulted in a strategic review at Group level and a decision to sell the commercial cleaning subsidiary division and focus on more core business services.
Hornblower was engaged following an interaction with the business during the sale of the previous Commercial Cleaning Services business in May 2015; the Managing Director and the CEO instructed us to take the business to market because the MD’s departure was imminent and the sale needed to be transacted in the shortest possible timescales whilst still achieving full value for the business.
What Hornblower Did
Following the successful sale of our previous Commercial Cleaning Services business in May, we knew we had a very strong database of trade buyers and investors that would be very interested in acquiring a business such as this. There is a very strong demand for commercial cleaning and facilities management businesses in the current market and we knew we had a number of keen buyers waiting for just this opportunity.
We took the business to market at the beginning of October 2015 and had agreed heads of terms by the end of October. The buyers and their advisors were very experienced and focused and the deal was completed on the 30th November 2015; 2 months from start to finish.
WIN WIN
The final buyer is a large facilities management conglomerate from Italy making this acquisition to get a foothold in the UK market for diversification purposes. The Italian company had no existing operating capability in the UK so the initial part of the deal includes the directors retaining operation of the business while the new parent company establishes its own management team in the South of England.
Our client is now in a position to focus its strategic effort and resources on their core services and capitalise on the market opportunities opening up for them there.
We wish both parties every success in the future.
SOLD – November 2015
