Samsic realizes German market entry by acquisition of epex group
The Düsseldorf sector team Business Services successfully advised the shareholder of epex group on the sale of the majority of his shares to French Samsic Group. The parties agreed not to disclose the conditions of the transaction.
epex group, headquartered in Neu-Ulm, is a German nationwide business services provider in the sector of facility management services. The group has a workforce of more than 1,700 employees and around 1,600 network partners that support the entire service portfolio in infrastructural and technical building management, as well as logistics and traffic management. The particular strengths of epex lie within the areas of maintenance cleaning and winter services, followed by green and grey area maintenance as well as special cleaning services. With its wide service offering in Germany and Austria the Group operates under its brands epex, Dornseif, Ludwig, metz and deav. The company was founded by Mr. Elias Chisari in 2001 and has since then recorded an impressive growth. Currently, the group generates sales in the mid double-digit million range.
“The support by the entire Livingstone team during the course of the transaction was essential for its success. The high level of service-dedication combined with the broad know-how in the navigation of owner-managed businesses through the pitfalls of sales processes contributed significantly to the overachievement of my goals,” said Mr. Chisari, founder and CEO of epex group. “We are convinced that we have found in Samsic a strong partner, who will support us and facilitate our growth process. We have already identified a lot of opportunities on how to further establish our company in the German speaking markets and gain further competitiveness.”
Samsic Group from Rennes, France, is one of the leading European players in the area of facility management as well as staff secondment and temporary employment, with a contemplated turnover of more than EUR 1.8 billion in 2017. Its range of services covers recurring cleaning services, maintenance services, security services, secondment of temporary workers and all facets of a modern 360° service provider. Samsic has been implementing a very successful European consolidation strategy for several years already and is now able to offer its international customers and corporations a consistent service quality in the German market as well.
Dr. André Schröer, Partner at Livingstone Düsseldorf, explains: “We were very pleased when Mr. Chisari and epex group contacted us following our previous interactions when we sold Dornseif to epex in 2014. epex has developed extremely dynamically over the last few years and is thus an ideal addition to the Samsic Group’s international service portfolio. We believe it will be a fruitful collaboration for both parties and that Samsic’s German location will benefit from many synergies on the customer as well as the cost-level.”
“On the basis of good preparation, it was always possible to limit the additional workload burden on company as well as management level as much as possible,” commented Oliver Pap, CFO of epex group, and Johannes Faber, Associate Director at Livingstone Düsseldorf, on their cooperation throughout the sales process. “The Livingstone team always thought one step ahead during the entire process and arranged a smooth and seamless transaction process for us,” continued Oliver Pap.
This is already the second transaction that the Düsseldorf team has completed with epex group, following their acquaintance from an earlier transaction, in which Livingstone acted as the advisor to the insolvent Dornseif Winterdienst e. Kfr. (insolvency administrator Stefan Meyer, now Pluta Rechtsanwälte) in the sale of certain assets including the operating business to epex group.
