UTC

Unsurprisingly, this month has seen very few important industry announcements as the holiday season starts to kick in. However when we start to sieve through the considerable flow of data there is still valuable information to uncover. Public quoted security companies across the globe have this month announced their 2nd quarter results and with few […]

The current wave of consolidation among security equipment manufacturers will continue, driven largely by the sector’s fragmentation, a new research report predicts. The study, from Memoori ltd., a U.K.-based research firm that follows the building automation sector, found that 50 percent of the companies in the security products industry lack the economic size to remain […]

Almost a year ago, we forecast for 2009 a slowing down in merger and acquisition activity, but more ‘stock for stock’ deals and a significant growth in alliances. Alliance arrangements have grown in abundance and ‘stock for stock’ mergers have increased but not to the extent that we anticipated. However, the volume of mergers measured […]

There has been a slowing down in the consolidation process since the start of 2008 but it was not until August 2008 and the financial meltdown that this trend became manifest. The reason for the fall in activity is the credit squeeze and resultant lack of finance which first became apparent in August 2007 and […]

On 12th November, UTC announced that it had agreed to purchase GE Fire & Security for $1.82 billion which will be the biggest security and safety deal recorded in the last five years. Many column inches have since been written about why this was such a good deal for UTC but in the short term […]

UTC announced today that they will buy GE Security for $1.8 billion. The full details have not yet been disclosed but this looks to be an exit price based on sales revenue of around unity. This seems like a good buy particularly considering that it cost GE Security at least $2 billion to assemble the […]

The third quarter results of the major security players reported this month would suggest that the market for electronic security products and systems has not yet bottomed out. The decline in security sales, where reported, was around 15% compared with the same period last year. As also noted last month it is evident that the […]

Back in April this year we placed GE Fire & Security on our list of the top 50 potential acquisition prospects for 2009. This followed the decision that month for the sale of 81 percent of its Homeland Protection business to Safran, a French company known mainly in the security industry for its Sagem Securite […]