EADS sets a foot on the lucrative homeland security and public safety market.

The company announced yesterday that it had acquired California-based company PlantCML, the leader of the US civil security sector with a 70 % market share. The aerospace group paid $ 350M (Euro 220M) to US investment fund Golden Gate Capital to acquire the company, which is implanted in several major US cities, including New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston or Phoenix, as well as in Mexico and Canada. PlantCML has an annual turnover of about $ 200M and employs just over 600 people. Its emergency-response activities will be fully integrated into EADS North America. Louis Gallois declared: “Thanks to this acquisition, EADS strengthens its position in the field of security systems and solutions, while realising our wish to invest in expanding our capacities and US foothold”. The homeland security and public safety market is very profitable in the US, where it reports two-digit growth rates. Herve Guillou, CEO of the group’s Defence and Security Systems division, detailed: “We are going to consolidate French technology by merging the American P25 standard with ours, Tetrapol, which is used in 23 countries worldwide. We will also mutualise our research and development with PlantCML’s in order to […] develop related services”. This acquisition brings to EADS’s portfolio the control of the three securitised telecommunications technologies used in the world, says Le Figaro Economie. The daily notes that it also marks the first US move made by EADS within its recently-unveiled Vision 2020 strategic plan. Cited by AFX, Ralph Crosby, CEO of EADS North America, said “the resources of PlantCML are a perfect match with our growing homeland security and public safety activity, which already includes turn-key professional mobile radio system and network security training”. In an interview with La Tribune, Marwan Lahoud, head of strategy and marketing at the group, comments that EADS “is earning its green card to work in the US”. He details that discussions over this acquisition started in November 2007 and that other US projects might be “in the pipe”. Mr Lahoud, recalls Financial Times, said in an interview this year that EADS was targeting sales of $ 5Bn in North America by 2012, a five-fold increase in four years. AFP (22/04), Reuters (22/04), AFX (22/04), Les Echos, Le Figaro Economie, La Tribune, Handelsblatt, Financial Times Deutschland, Borsen-Zeitung, Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal Europe, International Herald Tribune, Expansion