Cleanzine: your weekly cleaning and hygiene industry newsletter 18th April 2024 Issue no. 1110
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Some years back whilst representing the Association of Building Cleaning Direct Service Providers at meetings of the now defunct Cleaning Industry National Training Organisation, our industry was seeking to partner another, with a view to raising enough funding between us to apply for Sector Skills Council status and thus receive Government grants towards training.
I could never quite understand why an industry as enormous as ours would need to involve others, but it soon became clear that we would not succeed in raising the required sums to be able to apply on our own so we went about the business of seeking partners.
One body with which we were in discussion represented the security industry and we all felt that our coming together would be a good fit as both industries have a heavy presence in buildings when their normal occupants are away. This partnership didn't materialise though and the cleaning industry is now part of the Asset Skills, the 'Sector Skills Council for the places where we live and work' - and a very good job this organisation seems to be doing too!
As you can imagine though, it came as no surprise to me, to learn a couple of weeks back that G4S was to take over ISS A/S for some £5.2 billion. Yes - it seemed to be a perfect fit.
Yesterday's announcement that the deal was not going to go ahead, had been coming for several days and Chairman of the Board of ISS, Ole Andersen's comment that: "G4S's shareholders would not support the acquisition, due to the size and perceived complexity of the deal against the current macroeconomic backdrop," backed up the news we'd been expecting all week.
I couldn't help wondering though, whether it was the fact that it was the lowly image of 'cleaning' which put shareholders off the deal and whether - if it had been a similar sized/placed organisation in, say, new technology - it would have stood a better chance of going ahead...
3rd November 2011