Jacobs has completed its acquisition of CH2M, creating a $15bn company after CH2M shareholders voted 96% in favour of the deal, it was announced yesterday.
Dallas-headquartered Jacobs’ chairman and CEO Steve Demetriou called the $3.3bn purchase a “transformative step-change”.
Jacobs’ chairman and CEO Steve Demetriou (Jacobs)
“Since our August announcement, we have held meetings with thousands of CH2M and Jacobs employees, and I cannot overstate the enthusiasm we share about our future together,” he said.
By adding the smaller, Denver, Colorado-based CH2m, Jacobs now employs 74,000 people around the world.
As GCR reported in July, Jacobs sees the acquisition as a way of boosting its presence in the UK infrastructure sector, in which CH2M is active.
Jacobs formed an Integration Management Office in August to start planning the merger.
This office “identified rigorous processes and protocols to drive realization of cost and growth synergies”, Jacobs said yesterday.
Jacobs expects to save around $150m a year within two years of its acquisition from “optimized organizational alignment and systems integrations”. Achieving this will incur a one-off $225m cost.
The company expects to move to reporting results by three global business lines by the second half of fiscal 2018:
- Aerospace, technology, environmental and nuclear;
- Buildings, infrastructure and advanced facilities; and
- Energy, chemicals and resources.
