Yahoo Finance Company rescued for £1 now valued at almost £50m after sale
A logistics and delivery group has been valued at almost £50m as a majority stake was snapped up by a listed company based in Sweden.
Elanders Group has acquired nearly 90 per cent of Royal Wootton Bassett-based Bishopsgate Specialist Installations, which had previously been part of Master Removers Group.
The company has around 250 employees and had sales of £27m during the last 12 months.
Elanders has signed an agreement to acquire 88.5 per cent of the shares in Bishopsgate in a deal which values it at £47.5m.
The acquisition is conditional on the fulfilment of customary contractual terms and is expected to be closed within a couple of weeks.
The acquisition will be financed in part by an acquisition loan of £115m from Elanders’ three main banks in cooperation with SEK, the Swedish Export Credit Corporation. The loan will also finance parts of Elanders’ acquisition of Kammac Ltd.
After two decades of consecutive acquisitions, this is the first sale for Master Removers Group. It originally acquired Bishopsgate Specialist Installations for £1 in 2007.
Charles Rickards, Master Removers Group’s finance and marketing director, said: “When we bought Bishopsgate, we were operating outside our normal comfort zone of removals and storage.
“It has not all been plain sailing , but we did get off to a good start which is always essential with new ventures and managed get more things right than we got wrong and perhaps our simplistic way of addressing opportunities kept us in good stead and more importantly it has been good fun, most of the time.”
The Master Removers Group owns 11 removal brands between London and Bridport including Anthony Ward Thomas and Aussie Man and Van in London and the recently acquired Northover Gilbert in Bridport.
