27.02.2006

Access Industrie recapitalisation

We completely missed the fact back in October that Access Industrie, the access and telehandler rental company based in South West France, with depots throughout France as well as in Spain and Portugal, has been the subject of a buy-in by venture capital company Butler Capital Partners of Paris.

The transaction has been kept extremely low profile, with very little mention of it on the Paris bourse small caps market, where Access is listed. Daniel Duclos, the founder and president could not be reached this morning for comment.

It seems that Access Industrie has concluded a deal whereby Butler Capital Partners has put in around €20 million of capital which will give it at least 50 percent of the business and joint control of the company with Daniel Duclos and his team.

The deal is subject to a renegotiation and refinancing of the company’s financing and debts as well as a full audit of the company’s accounts for 2005.

In 2004 Access Industrie had revenues of €38 million with an operating profit of €3.1 million. As of the end of 2004, the balance sheet had a negative equity of over €6 million.