A Lake Forest security services provider is gaining global resources and deep pockets as a result of a four-company merger led by private equity firm The Riverside Co.
National Monitoring Center is joining Houston-based CalAtlantic Security Solutions, OnWatch Multifire PLC in the U.K. and Netwatch in Ireland in the quartette.
The combined entity, Netwatch Group, will be based in Ireland, its U.S. headquarters in Lake Forest.
“The whole strategy was to have a global brand,” said Chief Executive David Walsh, who will lead the roll-up company.
The management team includes National Monitoring Center Managing Director and President Woodie Andrawos; CalAtlantic Managing Director Daniel Goodhall; Niall Kelly, co-founder and chief technology officer of Netwatch; and Onwatch Managing Director Peter Gould.
Consider the union a land grab.
Netwatch has a strong presence back east with offices in Boston, New York, Pittsburgh and Chicago, as well as in the U.K. It specializes in remote video monitoring via command centers in Lake Forest and Northern Ireland.
CalAtlantic serves the Sun Belt with significant business in Texas, Florida, Arizona and Louisiana. The company was an early adopter of applied video analytics and focuses on loss prevention and remote monitoring services.
National Monitoring Center is a market leader on the West Coast providing residential and commercial security, fire alarm management and temperature monitoring in cooling and farm applications. It operates monitoring centers in Lake Forest and Irving, Texas.
Multifire caters primarily to U.K. customers.
“It all comes together really well to produce a power house in video monitoring,” Walsh said.
The combined company services more than 300,000 customers on four continents in the government, transportation, utilities, communications, energy, manufacturing, education, finance, tourism, retail and residential sectors. The group uses a dealer network of more than 1,000 providers, typically alarm and security product installers.
Netwatch Group will have annual revenue surpassing $60 million and a commitment from Riverside Co. to fund acquisitions and internal growth, according to Walsh.
“The plan is to double the size of the company over the next three years,” he said.
Big competitors include ADT, G4S and Securitas.
Netwatch Group employs about 580, roughly 200 of them in OC.
The first seeds of a merger were planted more than a year ago as Walsh led discussions with 20 private equity firms before reaching a deal with New York-based Riverside, which has more than $7 billion in assets under management, 75 portfolio companies and offices in 16 locations.
The deal strengthens Orange County’s developing cybersecurity hub, which includes Irvine software security providers Cylance Inc. and SecureAuth Corp.; Hacknowledge and Titan Health & Security Technologies in Newport Beach; Aliso Viejo-based Veracity Industrial Networks; and the University of California-Irvine’s Cybersecurity Policy & Research Institute.
