Swiss Post is selling its subsidiary Swiss Post Solutions (SPS) for 375 million francs. The buyer is the investment company AS Equity Partners based in Freienbach SZ and London.
There have been rumors about the future of SPS for a long time. In addition to a sale, an IPO was reportedly also up for debate. These have now definitely been smashed with the sale. According to Blick information, the Post had only been negotiating exclusively with AS Equity for weeks after the IPO failed. In the negotiations, which came to a conclusion on Friday, AS Equity is said to have put extreme pressure on the price.
The SPS is active in document management. It helps companies to digitize and automate their processes. In the case of banks, for example, this affects the processing of direct debits (LSV) or mortgage lending.
Negative headlines about parties in Vietnam
It is obvious that this business area does not fit into the strategy of the parent company. Under the motto “Post of tomorrow”, Swiss Post wants to concentrate on its core business: In addition to letter and parcel post, this includes public transport with PostBus and financial services with Postfinance. However, there is no room in the strategy for specialized document management such as that provided by the PLC.
SPS has been growing for years, especially in the core markets of Asia, the USA and Europe. In order to continue to grow successfully, investments and acquisitions for SPS are pending abroad, writes the Post. Against this background, the question arises whether Swiss Post is still the right owner, explains Swiss Post for its approach. After examining various strategic options, Swiss Post came to the conclusion that a sale was the best option.
The state-owned company SPS also wanted to sell because the company made a name for itself with expensive parties in Vietnam and a boss who drove a Porsche Cayenne as a company car. In addition to these incidents, Blick also announced that the company, which has 7,800 employees in more than 20 countries under the management of Jörg Vollmer (54), allowed employees at two Vietnamese locations to sleep for weeks in tent camps in the offices during Corona. The post-internal investigation into the incidents at SPS is still ongoing.
Union: Fear about working conditions
The 7,800 SPS employees will be taken over by AS Equity Partners. Customers include, in particular, banks, insurance companies, telecommunications providers and companies in the healthcare sector. The sales agreement was signed last Friday and the actual takeover is expected to be completed in the following months, subject to compliance with regulatory requirements and closing conditions.
The Syndicom union criticized the sale in a statement on Monday. The working conditions of the employees are acutely endangered, as long as SPS does not commit to an extension of the social partnership. The Post is now stealing from its responsibility for these people and is paying for them properly.
Syndicom wants to discuss the continuation of the social partnership with the SPS management. The union demands that CLA negotiations take place. The GAV expires at the end of 2022, the negotiations for an extension are planned for spring. (SDA / sfa / pt)