Sodexo acquires property skills

05 October 2011

Sodexo has agreed to acquire two businesses from Atkins - its managing contractor and managing agent businesses – to further underline the company’s strategy of diversifying its portfolio.

Neil Murray, Managing Director for Sodexo’s facilities management business in corporate services in the UK and Ireland, said: “This acquisition will give us new professional skills and resources in property services that will strengthen our FM offer strategically and help us to accelerate our growth in the FM and property asset management market. “The integration of these businesses into Sodexo’s existing FM business will result in a fully integrated FM offer on a scale that currently does not exist in the UK market.”

The managing agent business will bring to Sodexo new professional consulting expertise, specialist management skills and dedicated knowledge management systems. This business will be re-named Sodexo Property Solutions and will continue to offer a fully independent service where demanded by current and future customers, whilst supporting the development of the fully integrated FM offering that will provide customers with further quality and cost benefits.

The managing contractor business will strengthen the hard services capability of Sodexo’s integrated proposition and has a proven record, operating successfully in hard and soft FM areas within major PFI projects in health, local authorities and defence markets. Sean Haley, who has led Atkins’ asset management business for the last seven years and will become chief operating officer of Sodexo FM in the UK and will report into Neil Murray, said: ‘This is excellent news and a natural next step in the evolution of our business. The rich skill set created by this deal will uniquely position us to quickly develop the next generation of sophisticated FM solutions that our customers are demanding. The management team and I are excited about the move and look forward to working with Neil and his team to shape and deliver the FM propositions of the future.“

All the management team and employees in the acquired businesses will transfer to Sodexo.