APCOA Parking

This article is about the European parking facilities operator. For the acquired US parking facilities operator, see Airport Parking Company of America.
APCOA Parking
Private
Industry Car parks
Founded 1949 (1949) in Cleveland, Ohio USA
Founders Howard Metzenbaum and Ted Bonda
Area served
 15 Countries worldwide
Website www.apcoa.com

APCOA Parking AG is Europe's longest-established full service parking management company.[1] It manages over 860,000 parking spaces across 15 countries, and employs approximately 4,500 people. It is headquartered at Stuttgart Airport in Germany.

History

In 1949, Howard Metzenbaum and Ted Bonda founded APCOA as the Airport Parking Company of America, Inc. in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1966, the company was acquired by the ITT Corporation and was made into a division of ITT.[2][3] In 1970, APCOA Autoparking GmbH was founded in Stuttgart,[4] under the German wing of ITT, called SEL. The company then expanded across Europe, entering[2] Vienna, capital of Austria, in 1970; Sunbury on Thames, England, in 1981;[note 1] Mantua, Italy in 1985; and Rotterdam, Netherlands, in 1989. By the mid-1980s, most of the European in-country subsidiaries had been divested from ITT, and slowly over the next ten years the management of APCOA Autoparking GmbH began to re-integrate the group under common ownership.[1] The US operations of APCOA were purchased from ITT Corporation through a management buyout in 1975 and eventually merged with Standard Parking in 1998.

In 1991, venture capital company CWB Capital Partners of London financed a management buyout. The company changed its name to APCOA Holding AG in 1994, and again to APCOA Parking AG in 1995. It trades on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, with 75% of shares held by UK registered investors.[2] In April 1999, Salamander AG of Kornwestheim acquired 27.1% of APCOA Parking AG shares, and took complete control in October of that year. The company continued to expand through acquisition, including the parking subsidiary of UK based FirstGroup. In 2002 EnBW-AG of Karlsruhe purchased 98.7% of Salamander AG, to virtually control APCOA Parking AG.[2] After consolidating various partnerships to 100% ownership, the company continued its expansion into Eastern Europe, entering Rijeka, Croatia in 2003. The company was delisted from the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in 2003.[2]

Current operations

On June 30, 2004, Investcorp acquired 98.3% of APCOA Parking AG shares from EnBW AG through its vehicle Parking Holdings GmbH for €265 million including debt.[4] In 2005 the company entered Switzerland, and changed the name of Parking Holdings GmbH to APCOA Parking Holdings GmbH (APHG). After a bidding battle with National Car Parks owned by 3i, and Australia's Macquarie Bank;[4] on 19 February 2007 French based investment company Eurazeo announced the proposed purchase of APCOA Parking AG for €885 million from Investcorp.[6] APCOA is presently the market leading provider of car parking (by number of spaces managed) in Germany (225,000 spaces), Norway (96,900), Denmark (61,900), Austria (48,100), Italy (42,400), and Poland (12,600).[6]

Notes

  1. ↑ Latterly won the first open local authority tender for on-street enforcement services in the City of Westminster, and provide the UK's first "whole of borough" parking solution to Southwark Council from car park to local street.[5]

References

  1. 1 2 APCOA at Sovereign Publications
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 APCOA Company History
  3. ↑ "History of Holberg Industries, Inc. – FundingUniverse". fundinguniverse.com.
  4. 1 2 3 Eurazeo buys into European car parks The Times - February 19, 2007
  5. ↑ APCOA" British Parking Awards winner - 2006
  6. 1 2 Eurazeo to purchase APCOA

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Carpark.
This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Tuesday, September 22, 2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.