South Staffordshire Plc

Company profile

South Staffordshire Plc company profile

South Staffordshire Plc is an integrated services group with two highly regarded separate regulated water supply businesses. South Staffordshire Plc is an integrated services group with two highly regarded separate regulated water supply businesses (South Staffs Water and Cambridge Water) coupled with the provision of related non-regulated specialist services within two main divisions, Echo and SSI Services. The South Staffordshire Waterworks Company, was formed in 1853 to provide "an abundant supply of pure water" to the inhabitants of the towns of the Black Country. South Staffordshire Waterworks Company became a public limited company in 1991 and was listed on the London Stock Exchange as South Staffordshire Water. In 1992 South Staffordshire Water Holdings was created to grow non-regulated businesses. In April 2004, in recognition of the success of those non-regulated businesses, South Staffordshire Group Plc de-merged South Staffordshire Plc, which included South Staffs Water, Echo and Rapid, as a separate listed company on the London Stock Exchange. In November 2004 the Group was acquired by Arcapita Bank, a Bahrain based investment company, and the Group was delisted from the Stock Exchange. In October 2007 South Staffordshire Plc was acquired by Alinda Capital Partners, a European and American investor in and manager of infrastructure assets, and is now part of its $7bn infrastructure fund. In order to broaden its range of specialist infrastructure contracting services, the Group has made a number of acquisitions since its demerger in 2004, including OnSite, Integrated Water Services, Hydrosave, Omega Red, Data Contracts Specialist Maintenance and Perco Engineering Services and formed the SSI Services division. In March 2011, Echo Managed Services acquired Inter-Credit International, a specialist debt collection agency based in London. In October 2011 the Group acquired Cambridge Water Plc, a water only company which covers a population of approximately 315,000. The Cambridge Water business is now operated as a second supply region of South Staffordshire Water Plc. On 30 July 2013 South Staffordshire Plc was acquired by the Global Infrastructure Fund of investment firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co L.P. ("KKR"), together with certain of their infrastructure co-investors. In March 2016, Mitsubishi Corporation acquired a 25% equity interest in the Group.