JENSEN HUGHES, a portfolio company of Gryphon Investors, has acquired Hillard Heintze, a provider of security risk management services and investigation services for Fortune-ranked companies, professional sports leagues, law enforcement agencies, and affluent families.
Hillard Heintze operates through five practices: Security Risk Management, Threat and Violence Risk Management, Investigations, Law Enforcement Consulting, and Private Client and Family Office Services. Since its formation in 2004, more than 85 Fortune-ranked enterprises, 575 U.S. and international brands and 150 of the world’s most affluent families have used the services of the company. Hillard Heintze, led by founder and CEO Arnette Heintze, is headquartered in Chicago (www.hillardheintze.com).
“This is a very exciting day for us,” said Mr. Heintze. “The rapid growth of our two companies, respectively, has been driven by a comparable and complementary commitment to service excellence, exceptional talent, and an internal culture of teaming and collaboration. Joining Jensen Hughes is the most powerful and promising way to continue to meet our vision to be trusted around the world to protect what matters. As part of Jensen Hughes, we strengthen our ability to scale and adapt as our clients’ needs expand to areas such as fire and life safety, emergency management and forensics, and as their operations expand worldwide to new countries and markets – and new risks.”
JENSEN HUGHES, acquired by Gryphon in December 2015 from Huron Capital, is a provider of fire protection engineering and consulting services that includes fire safety systems design and analysis, code consulting, risk assessment, forensic investigation and testing, and security. The company’s clients are active in a wide range of industries and include half of the Fortune 500. JENSEN HUGHES, led by CEO Paul Orzeske, has more than 40 offices in North America and nine offices in Asia and the Middle East with a headquarters in Baltimore (www.jensenhughes.com).
In February 2019, JENSEN HUGHES acquired Technical Response Planning (TRP), a Houston-based provider of consulting services and software for emergency planning, training and response. The company specializes in delivering emergency (hurricanes, oil and chemical spills, and fires) response plans for large, complex operations. Customers of TRP are active in the oil & gas, power, manufacturing, transportation, and automotive sectors (www.emergency-response-planning.com).
“Our success stems from a consistent focus on providing our clients with exceptional specialty engineering and consulting services and through expanding our capabilities to meet their growing needs,” said Mr. Orzeske. “In our security practice, we have been able to provide clients the highest quality of security design engineering. However, we recognized that we could help them solve their security challenges more holistically with a broader portfolio of capabilities. Hillard Heintze’s services complement our work exceptionally well, and, like ours, their team is passionate about its commitment to providing outstanding client service. Together we can improve our ability to partner with clients and help them manage their operations across an end-to-end spectrum of risk – from fire and life safety to emergency management and security. Arnette and team have built a best-in-class organization and we are honored to welcome them to the Jensen Hughes family.”
Gryphon makes leveraged acquisitions and growth investments in middle-market companies. The firm invests from $50 million to $200 million of capital in companies with sales from $100 million to $500 million. Sectors of interest include business services, consumer and retail, automotive, chemical, general manufacturing, healthcare and hotels.
Gryphon closed its fourth private equity buyout fund, Gryphon IV LP, in November 2016 at $1.1 billion, and raised a $100 million captive mezzanine fund, Gryphon Mezzanine Partners LP, in August 2017. The firm is based in San Francisco (www.gryphoninvestors.com).
Livingstone (www.livingstonepartners.com) was the financial advisor to Hillard Heintze.
© 2019 Private Equity Professional | April 26, 2019
