Kinetics Group Adds On

UK private equity firm Sovereign Capital has backed its social housing services company Kinetics Group to acquire The Lord Group. Lord is a Rochdale-based fabric maintenance provider to the Greater Manchester social housing sector.

Following several significant acquisitions, Kinetics Group has grown from a US$64m (Gbp32m) revenue business in 2006 to a company with annual sales in excess of US$199m (Gbp100m) today.

Sovereign Capital acquired Kinetics Group in March 2007 to benefit from increased UK Government spend on social housing maintenance.

PRESS RELEASE

Sovereign Capital, the UK private equity buy & build specialist, today announces the acquisition of The Lord Group Limited (“Lord”) by its portfolio company Kinetics Group (“Kinetics”). Lord, based in Rochdale, is a significant fabric maintenance provider to the Greater Manchester social housing sector.

The acquisition extends Kinetics' existing fabric maintenance business in the North West, an area benefiting from significant local government spend to improve the region's social housing stock. Combined with the Merseyside-based Camerons division of Kinetics, the Group now serves a broader spread of local authority framework agreements in the North West and through Lord will diversify its customer base with the introduction of education and NHS contracts.

As a result of Sovereign's buy & build strategy, Kinetics has grown from a Gbp32m revenue business in 2006 to a company with annual sales in excess of gbp100m today and now directly employs 1,200 staff nationwide with main offices in London, Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham.

The directors of Lord, Janet and Andrew Lord, are to remain in the business going forward and will assist with its integration into Kinetics and the development of existing customer relationships. 
 
Simon Hitchcock, Director at Sovereign, said:
“Achieving critical mass in fabric maintenance in the North West is an important step for Kinetics. The combined scale of Lord and Camerons will enable Kinetics to tender for other, larger contracts in a region which is witnessing substantial local authority expenditure to improve the UK's third largest pool of social housing stock. This acquisition, the fifth for the overall Group in less than fifteen months, clearly demonstrates the value-add of Sovereign's buy & build strategy.”
 
Chris Cheshire, Group Managing Director at Kinetics Group Limited, added:
“The acquisition of Lord complements Kinetics' existing fabric maintenance business, extends the geographic reach in the North West and brings some of the region's key framework agreement contracts to the Group. We look forward to developing the combined fabric maintenance business to take advantage of our newfound scale and to maximise cross-selling opportunities into our gas maintenance and MOD divisions.”