Hays expands mail arm with pounds 65m buy

Monday 02 September 1996 23:02 BST
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Hays, the business services group, has expanded its UK business mail activities with the pounds 65m acquisition of Inkhold, the holding company of ICS Corporation.

The deal comes less than a month after Hays abandoned its pounds 1.14bn bid for Christian Salvesen, undermining the company's ambition to become Europe's biggest transport and distribution group.

Hays pulled out after its bid was rejected by the Salvesen board despite a significant improvement in the terms.

ICS provides a range of early morning delivery services through a national depot network handling some 800,000 items a night.

Hays said the services and customer base of ICS were complementary to those of Hays Document Exchange (Hays DX), serving the insurance, travel, optical health and Government sectors. ICS also offers facilities management services, similar to those provided by Hays' Workflow.

Hays said the acquisition would be immediately earnings-enhancing, before integration costs and the synergy benefits the company claimed from combining the services of ICS, Hays DX and Hays Express Services.

Ronnie Frost, chairman of Hays, said: "There will be substantial benefits from integrating ICS into our commercial core activities. The acquisition will broaden the range of services and customers and provide a strong platform to expand into Europe."

ICS emerged in a management buyout in January 1995. For the period to 31 Dec 1995, Inkhold, the management buy-out company, made an operating profit of pounds 3m on turnover of pounds 58.6m. The price paid by Hays includes the repayment of existing borrowings.

Hays' share price finished the day unchanged at 458p.

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