Citizens M&A Advisory has served as the financial adviser to Leadec in its acquisition of Diversified Automation, Inc.
Founded in 2002, Diversified Automation is a leading automation controls and software solution provider to the express parcel industry. It serves global express parcel and e-commerce companies, prime contractors and integrators with end customers that include Amazon, FedEx Ground and UPS. Headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky, and with annual sales of approximately $100 million, Diversified Automation has more than 140 engineers and project managers operating in seven locations across the United States.
Leadec, a portfolio company of Triton, is headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, and is a leading engineering, installation, maintenance and support service specialist for industrial facilities across their entire life cycle and their related infrastructure. Operating on four continents with 20,000 employees worldwide and almost 60 years of experience, Leadec has more than 300 facility sites and generated approximately USD1 billion in sales in 2019.
“Engineering and process automation are the spearhead of Leadec’s service offering across the factory life cycle. Diversified Automation ideally completes our service portfolio with controls and software solutions for the parcel industry, a market segment which is thriving due to the growth of e-commerce. This also strengthens the technical profile of our US operations,” says Markus Glaser-Gallion, CEO of the Leadec Group.
Christian Geissler, CFO of the Leadec Group, added: “Diversified Automation supports Leadec’s diversification into new end markets with high-growth potential. The deal strengthens the resilience of our business model.”
“We appreciate the Leadec team for the trust they place in Citizens as their exclusive buy-side advisor to identify high-value market segments and companies that expand their customer base and service offering in North America. Citizens’ extensive knowledge of the industrial automation sector allowed us to recognise this opportunity for Leadec to enhance its service offering by entering the high-growth parcel sortation market. We are thrilled that we were able to leverage our expertise and relationships in the industry to identify Diversified Automation as an ideal partner for Leadec,” says Matt Mueller, managing director at Citizens.
Citizens’ unique and differentiated approach to buy-side M&A advisory resulted in six completed buy-side transactions in 2020 with a combined enterprise value of USD2.5 billion.
Citizens M&A Advisory specialises in middle-market mergers and acquisitions as well as later-stage financing transactions. Citizens combines sector intelligence with a client-focused approach to realise our clients’ true value. The Citizens team has closed more than 150 transactions in the last five years and has more than 60 M&A professionals specialising in a range of industries across the United States. Citizens M&A Advisory is part of Citizens Capital Markets, a subsidiary of Citizens Financial Group (NYSE: CFG).
