10 Major Security Mergers and Acquisitions From 2020
SSI rounds up the security industry’s most notable mergers and acquisitions of the year, including multibillion-dollar deals involving Allied Universal, Anixter and more.
Mergers and acquisitions are always a hot topic on SSI online. 2020 saw the M&A space face some adversity, unsurprisingly, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. While 2019 saw the amount of deals made eclipse the century mark, 2020 only saw around 70 deals made (as far as agreements covered by SSI).
Transactions slowed considerably in the Spring when the pandemic was at its peak and much of the industry, as well as society in general, was unsure of what to expect going forward. In fact, we only saw three deals take place between April and May. Nine took place during the same timeframe in 2019.
M&A began to rebound in July and has especially picked up in this final month of 2020 as companies look to get deals done before the new year.
A trend that continues from last year is the continued interest in the security industry from private equity firms. In fact, one of the biggest deals of the year saw an affiliate of Clayton, Dubilier & Rice (CD&R) get in a bidding war with Wesco Int’l over global distributor Anixter.
Just when it looked like CD&R sealed the deal with an all cash offer $3.8 billion at the end of 2019, Wesco swooped in with an even better offer of $4.5 billion the following January.
The only other billion dollar deal seen in 2020 was Allied Universal’s acquisition of G4S for $5.1 billion, which came after a failed takeover bid just a month earlier.
Other notable M&A deals that took place in 2020 include Pelco being sold again, ADT acquiring its largest independent dealer and more. View the slideshow to see what other deals transpired.
View 10 Major Security Mergers and Acquisitions of 2020
There were many other notable transactions that occurred that just missed the list. Make sure to give the M&A page a quick browse to get caught up.
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About the Author
Steve Karantzoulidis, Web/Senior Editor
Steven A. Karantzoulidis is the Web Editor for Security Sales & Integration. He graduated from the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a degree in Communication and has a background in Film, A/V and Social Media.
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