Shut down by Securitas Direct, Stanley is new Niscayah suitor

Very interesting dealings in the past few days with Niscayah, Securitas and Stanley Black & Decker.

On May 16, Niscayah's former parent company announces it wants to buy the company back for $907 million. At that time, Securitas CEO Alf Goransson was quoted as saying during a press conference that in hindsight, selling off Niscayah in 2006 wasn't such a hot idea. The reason: to compete with other guard companies like G4S, Securitas really does need the integration and monitoring capabilities. Plus, Niscayah hadn't grown the way it had hoped, so it was a good target.

The deal made sense all around, analysts said.

And according to published reports, Niscayah's largest shareholders—Latour, SakI and MSAB, who are also shareholders in Securitas—supported the offer.

But, yesterday Stanley Black & Decker announced it had upped the ante with a $1.2 billion cash bid, a deal that the Niscayah board of directors announced yesterday that it supported.

Stanley has said in the past that it wants to continue to grow its security business globally and has acquired a monitoring company and a couple of other commercial companies in U.K ,  as well as the former ADT operation in France in March 2010.

It also recently made a play for Securitas Direct, a European alarm company that was formerly a part of Securitas, according to several published reports.

Securitas Direct and Securitas Systems (which was renamed Niscayah) were spun off from Securitas the guarding company in 2007.

Stanley worked with private equity firms Carlyle Group and Clayton Dubilier & Rice in making a bid for the alarm firm Securitas Direct, but was beat out by a group of PE funds.  According to a statement by Securitas Direct, the PE investors are managed by Bain Capital and Hellman & Friedman, based in London. That group “alongside management, agreed to acquire Securitas Direct from EQT V for a total enterprise value of approximately SEK 21 billion [$3.4 billion] and a potential additional payment of up to SEK 0.9 billion conditional on the future performance of Securitas Direct.”

Back to the Stanley bid for Niscayah: Will other bidders enter? Will Securitas up its bid? Most analysts think more bidders is unlikely.

In May Securitas said, in no uncertain terms that it Idid not intend to enter into a bidding war with rival bidders. And, according to Rueters and others, spokeswoman Gisela Lindstrand said on June 27 that Securitas' bid still stands, but so does a stance the firm will not enter a bidding war: "That is still the status. We will not do that,” she is quoted as saying.