The global commercial investment group CBRE is awaiting European Commission clearance for its £250m takeover of the British-based building services provider Norland.
Norland — which employs 4,000 people across 14 offices and serves 300 existing clients — will now be known as CBRE | Norland.
Founded in 1984 it operates from a network of regional offices throughout the UK, Ireland, the US and Asia. It provides technical engineering services to major national and global commercial real estate owners and occupiers who run critical environments, such as data centres and trading floors, a growing market segment requiring specialised knowledge and experience.
With a blue-chip roster of customers in the US and Singapore, Norland already serves a number of CBRE-managed accounts, including Bank of America Merrill Lynch and State Street Corporation.
Norland is ranked 53rd in The Sunday Times HSBC Top Track 250 league table, which ranks Britain’s leading mid-market private companies with the biggest sales — moving up 49 places from its position the previous year.
For its final fiscal year, ending in April 2013, the company reported revenue of £385m. Profits have grown at a double-digit rate every year over the last ten years, largely from corporations turning over the management of their real estate to third-party specialists on long term contracts.
Norland’s chief executive officer, Ian Entwistle, will continue in the same position with CBRE | Norland.
“Our firms fit together very well, both culturally and operationally,” he explained. “And by uniting our building technical engineering expertise with CBRE’s broad service offering and global reach, we foresee significant opportunities to expand our client base and accelerate our growth.” One immediate opportunity is to bring Norland’s services to CBRE’s client base in continental Europe, added Mr. Entwisle.
The head of CBRE’s UK and European Global Corporate Services division, within which Norland will be integrated, is Bill Concannon.
“Norland is a strong complement to our global platform and this transaction will significantly enhance our service offering and enable us to provide a unified suite of outsourcing services,” he said. “We will have the ability to self-perform building technical engineering services in Europe, as we already do for more than 850m sq ft of client properties in North America, Latin America and Asia-Pacific.”
CBRE expects to finance the acquisition with cash on hand and borrowings under its existing revolving credit facility. The Fortune 500-listed company ended the third quarter of 2013 with more than $500m [£303m] of cash on its balance sheet and approximately $1.1bn [£668m] available through its revolving credit facility.
“Norland significantly advances our corporate outsourcing offering in Europe,” added Mike Strong, CBRE’s European, the Middle East and African boss.
“The Norland team has built an exceptional reputation for managing the building technical engineering elements of occupier and investor portfolios. By combining our complementary expertise we will be able to offer clients unrivalled access to a fully-integrated, best-in-class suite of real estate services in the region.”
