General Security acquires New York Merchants Protective

PLAINVIEW, N.Y.—General Security, a full-service security company based here, recently acquired New York Merchants Protective Co., based out of New York City, adding 3,500 accounts.

“We were interested in doing a little more business in Manhattan and [the acquisition] certainly did that. It opened up a new group of customers to us,” Peter Allen, general manager for General Security, told Security Systems News. The acqusition closed Nov. 3, 2016, he said.

“We divested of our retail/consumer business as we are primarily focused on business-to-business relationships which involve larger scale integration and intelligence based monitoring and analytics,” Rick Rockwell, owner of NYMP, told SSN via email. PSB remains in the security industry with Unlimited Technology, a Pennsylvania-based integrator.

General Security has about 46,000 accounts now, and monitors about 19,000 additional wholesale accounts in its central station.

“It was a very good mix of residential and commercial—had some city fire accounts. It was well scattered,” Allen said. NYMP's base was about 60 percent residential and 40 percent commercial, he said.

Allen said that the company is currently maintaining the NYMP brand, but may change the name in the future. New York Merchants Protective Co. is an established name in the Manhattan area, Allen said, noting that the company was founded in 1910.

The company brought on 10 employees from NYMP, including salespeople, technicians and administrative employees.

How did the company approach the new customer base? “We keep as much the same as we can,” Allen said, adding that the customer invoices will look very similar, with Merchants' branding as well as General Security's name. “Hiring the people is great, because the customer sees the same faces, sees the same service techs that they're used to."

The company typically does several acquisitions a year, Allen said, adding that the company's wholesale central station is the source of many smaller acquisitions as dealers choose to leave the business.

In addition to General's headquarters here, the company also has locations in Winston Salem, N.C., Richmond, Va., and in Upstate New York in Buffalo, Rochester, Albany and Utica.

Barry Epstein, president of Vertex Capital, advised PSB on the transaction. “This was a strong regional play for General Security as NYMP's account geography was a perfect overlay onto parts of General's account base,” Epstein said.