On April 1, 2015, Adecco Group acquired Knightsbridge Human Capital Solutions for an enterprise value of $80 million. Adecco Group, which is the world’s leading provider of human resources solutions, will combine Knightsbridge with its subsidiary Lee Hecht Harrison.
The combination of Knightsbridge with Lee Hecht Harrison promises increased optimization of the two’s footprint and back-office functions. The acquisition will also expand the breadth of services available to both Knightsbridge and Lee Hecht Harrison clients globally, as Lee Hecht Harrison is recognized as a global leader in career transition and talent mobility.
Lee Hecht Harrison, a wholly owned subsidiary of Adecco Group, is the global leader in Career Transition, Leadership Development, Employee Engagement and Change Management with 350 offices in 64 countries, serving over 7,000 client firms and 200,000 candidates annually. In 2014, Lee Hecht Harrison had global revenues of EUR 334 million.
Founded in 2001, Knightsbridge is Canada’s leading human capital solutions firm, which last year had revenues of $56 million.
McMillan LLP represented Knightsbridge in the acquisition. The McMillan team was led by John Clifford and included Stephen Rigby, Chase Irwin, Tim Hughes and Adriana Rudensky (business law), Darcy Ammerman and Kathy Martin (financial services), Michael Friedman and Ryan Walker (tax), Margaret McNee (capital markets) and Sharon Groom (intellectual property and technology law).
Adecco Group was represented internally by its General Counsel Patrick Kleffel and Corporate Counsel Rannveig Sigurdardottir and by Pamela Jones, Executive Vice President, Human Resources and Legal of Lee Hecht Harrison. They were assisted by a team from Stikeman Elliott LLP that included Gayle Noble, Dana Borshy, Stéphanie Normandin and Hélia Taheri (corporate and M&A), Nancy Ramalho, Hélène Bussières and Charif El-Khouri (employment), Doug Harrison (litigation), Jonathan Auerbach (intellectual property) and Jeff Brown and Paul Beaudry (regulatory).