Protection One sale final

February 19, 2004 TOPEKA, Kan. - The long saga of the sale of Protection One ended Tuesday, when former parent company Westar Energy transferred finalized its sale to New York-based investment firm Quadrangle Group LLC. Last Friday, the deal cleared a major hurdle when the Kansas Corporation Commission issued an order approving the sale transactions. Quadrangle paid Westar $122 million for Protection One and all of its debt. The company acquired Protection One in 1997 for $320 million. For Richard Ginsburg, president and chief executive officer of Protection One, after 14 months of rumors about the company’s future, the completion of the sale is a relief. “It’s good for this process to be over,” he said. “It’s been very distracting for our employees, who have weathered this process very well.” Ginsburg said he doesn’t anticipate many changes as Protection One transfers to Quadrangle, with the exception of having to find new headquarters. The company’s 63 employees in Topeka have been based in Westar’s corporate headquarters for a number of years. Protection One has deferred interest payments on some of its bonds while it figures out how to restructure its balance sheet, Quadrangle said in a statement. Through its Quadrangle Capital Partners investment fund, Quadrangle looks to invest between $20 million and $150 million of capital in each transaction, and can exceed those amounts through additional investments from other limited partners of the group. For more on this story, see the March issue of Security Systems News.