For those of you who follow the “imaging” industry ….
Early in 2014, Cintas, a publicly traded company mostly
involved in the uniform rental business, announced its intention to sell off
its businesses providing document management, records management, document
shredding, scanning and imaging services.
Subsequently, it sold its shredding business to Shred-it, a major player
in the shredding industry. (Cintas retained a 42% interest in the shredding
business it sold to Shred-it)
In
November 2014, Cintas announced that it sold its document management, scanning
and imaging services business to a company known as Access. Here’s the announcement Access posted on its
web-site about that deal:
In
October 2014, Berkshire Partners, a Boston-based private equity group, whose
name should be at least somewhat familiar to reprographers, acquired a majority
interest in Access. Here’s the
announcement Access posted on its web-site about Berkshire’s “investment”:
Familiar, I say, because Berkshire Partners,
on July 31, 1987, purchased Charrette Corp (from its founders, Lionel Spiro and
Blair Brown.) Berkshire later
split Charrette into two companies and sold off Charrette ProGraphics (the
reprographics business) to Gruppo Picking Pack (later renamed to Service Point)
and sold off Charrette, Inc. (by then, a supplies company) to Pittman. Just for reference, this was the announcement
Berkshire Partners put up on its web-site back in 1987. (just the beginning of
the announcement):
Berkshire
Has Designs for Charrette Corp.
August 18, 1987 — Berkshire Partners on July 31 acquired Charrette Corp.,
a supplier of graphic imaging equipment, supplies and design services, in a
management buyout for an undisclosed price, said Bradley Bloom, a managing
director at the Boston firm.
Berkshire Partners made a ton of money on
its investment in Charrette. Evidently,
even years later, Berkshire Partners feels that there is still money to be made
investing in “imaging” businesses. Don’t
confuse Berkshire Partners with Warren Buffett’s Berkshire-Hathaway. They are not the same company. But, Berkshire-Hathaway did previously own a
very large interest in Iron Mountain, but liquidated that interest in
2010. Iron Mountain does not just store
boxes.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment