CLEVELAND, OH — A U.S. consortium, including Roger Penske, announced on May 4 that it has bought QEK Global Solutions (QEK), a provider of outsourced vehicle and asset management solutions. The purchasing consortium is led by Transportation Resource Partners, LP (TRP), a U.S.-based $265 million private equity fund focused on the transportation and transportation services sectors. Other investors included United Auto Group, Inc. and Penske Truck Leasing Co., L.P. Global M&A, the partnership of 27 firms of which Brown Gibbons Lang & Company (BGL) is the U.S. member, represented the seller. QEK's principal clients are global automotive original equipment manufacturers and a select group of their top-tier suppliers. It has operations in Europe, North America, and Australia. The company employs over 1,300 personnel at 65 locations and generated in excess of $110 million of revenues in fiscal 2004. It counts General Motors, Ford, Nissan, Renault, Peugeot, Saab and Volkswagen among its many clients. QEK supports both the OEMs’ general company car fleets – often used for product evaluation purposes – and specialized fleets such as marketing, engineering and fleet sales vehicles. Marketing cars are frequently referred to as demonstration or auto show cars. Engineering cars are used by internal research and development departments for testing purposes and fleet sales cars are typically returned to OEMs after a re-purchase from car rental companies. When QEK's Dutch parent company, LeasePlan Corporation, decided that QEK was non-core, it selected an international team of corporate finance advisers led by London-based Livingstone Guarantee (LG) to advise on the divestment. Global M&A partner firms BGL (U.S.), LG (U.K.), Beerworth & Partners (Australia) and Solveigh Corporate Development (The Netherlands) worked to generate global purchaser interest.
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