SG Fleet has purchased LeasePlan ANZ for $387 million. With the purchase of one the biggest fleet management and novated lease providers, SG Fleet will create a $2.5 billion leasing and fleet management organisation with a combined 250,000 vehicles under management in Australia and New Zealand.

SG Fleet’s Chief Executive Officer, Robbie Blau, said: “This is a transformational acquisition for the Company and will realise a number of our stated strategic objectives in an accelerated fashion.”

Both SG Fleet and LeasePlan offer fleet management and leasing services in Australia and New Zealand. The vendor of the businesses is LeasePlan Corporation, headquartered in the Netherlands and operating across 32 countries globally.

“LeasePlan Australia/New Zealand is a very complementary business to SG Fleet, in terms of business activities, customer profile, product quality and service culture. This creates significant scope for synergies and the ability to add additional scale across operations, and funding and procurement activities. The resulting efficiencies will allow us to deliver a very compelling offering to existing and prospective customers,” Mr Blau noted.

“The acquisition would result in an increase in the proportion of full-service products such as operating leases in our product mix, as well as an improvement in the proportion of recurring revenue. This significantly raises the overall quality, as well as resilience, of our earnings, something we have been working towards for some time. Acquiring a business that funds on- balance sheet also means we will bring our funding mix to the proportions we were targeting when we announced our securitisation project two years ago. It clearly creates a platform from which we can grow and create further shareholder value,” he said.

The parties will work together closely to plan for the integration process. Under an International Alliance Agreement that will operate from completion of the acquisition, the Company and LeasePlan Corporation will provide international customer and business opportunities referrals, product know-how and innovation sharing to each other. In addition to the equity interest received as part of the consideration, LeasePlan Corporation will nominate a director to join SG Fleet’s Board.

“The International Alliance Agreement with LeasePlan Corporation gives us both flexibility in terms of services transition and a very attractive opportunity with a major global player,” Mr Blau noted.

SG Fleet aims to complete the transaction before the end of 2o21.