PSI is the latest scooped up by IASG

December 18, 2003 RANCHO CUCAMONGA, Calif. - Protection Service Industries gained a new owner this week, a year after word first surfaced that the residential and systems integration firm was for sale. The winning bidder was Integrated Alarm Services Group, which owns the likes of wholesale monitoring company Criticom International, a financing arm and a Long Island, N.Y., installation firm Payne Security, to name a few. IASG paid $46 million for PSI, which is reported to have the equivalent of 59,000 alarm contracts. PSI had been owned by Lane Industries since 1994, which saw it grow from a single branch business to five locations. “We were interested in PSI because it gave us the opportunity to begin to migrate away from total reliance on residential monitoring,” said Tim McGinn, chairman and chief executive officer of IASG. According to a security industry source, IASG beat out a number of other bidders, including bidders with larger offers, because the company had the cash on hand to make the acquisition happen before the end of the year. IASG recently raised more than $200 million through an initial public offering and has been using that money to fund a number of acquisitions in the security industry. During the nearly 10 years that PSI was owned by Lane Industries, the company made 25 acquisitions in the security market, said Bill Keating, vice president of Lane Industries, a family-owned holding company with interests in other industries. Keating said the Lane family decided to sell PSI to focus its efforts on its other industries, such as its office product manufacturing, hospitality, cattle raising and real estate businesses. “Last year we were looking for a buyer for our residential customers and at the end of the last year we decided to change directions,” said Keating. “In April of this year we decided to put the entire company on the market.”