News

SE Capital Partners and Berggruen Holdings have acquired Brooklyn Center, Minnesota-based TLC Companies, a transportation specific professional employer organization. No financial terms were disclosed.

PRESS RELEASE

CHICAGO — March 05, 2019 — SE Capital Partners, LLC (“SE Capital”) is pleased to announce the purchase of TLC Companies (“TLC”) under its recent partnership with Berggruen Holdings. “The partnership, Berggruen/SE Capital Holdings, L.P. (“BSECP”), is extremely flexible on transaction size and structure, focusing largely on lower middle market transactions with enterprise values ranging from $15 to $100 million,” said Paul Mulvaney partner at SE Capital. BSECP is looking to deploy at least $400 million of equity capital across multiple investment platforms with TLC representing the first such investment platform of the partnership.

“We partnered with SE Capital as a result of their long track record of buying, building and growing middle market companies. We look forward to continue to build out our investment portfolio in partnership with SE Capital and with additional niche market leaders like TLC,” said Koonal Gandhi, CIO of Berggruen Holdings.

TLC, based in Brooklyn Center, MN, is the nation’s largest transportation specific Professional Employer Organization (PEO) in the United States, providing outsourced human resource services, including payroll processing, workers compensation insurance and other employee benefits for the transportation industry.

“We view TLC as an impressive company with a strong management team and a dominant market share in the transportation focused PEO space,” said Jeff Kvam, partner at SE Capital. “TLC serves as a great platform from which to build the marketplace for transportation company clients.”

“Our team is excited to partner with SE Capital to execute on our long-term growth strategy. As the largest transportation specific PEO, we have an amazing opportunity to become a more valuable partner to our existing transportation clients as well as provide additional services to the truckers themselves,” said Tim Coughlin, TLC’s CEO. “We believe SE Capital’s long track record of executing on aggressive growth strategies alongside their management partners made them the ideal partner for us. We look forward to working with them to further invest in sales, marketing, and IT infrastructure so we can better service our clients.”

About TLC Companies
Founded in 1985, TLC is the largest and most trusted transportation specific Professional Employer Organization (PEO) in the United States. Today, The TLC Companies partners with over 700 clients representing worksites ranging in size from 1 to over 900 employees. TLC has been able to leverage its 25+ years of experience in risk management and transportation services to help clients lower their operating costs.
TLC’s core service of workers’ compensation, risk management, driver screening/services and payroll processing is wrapped into a state of the art HRIS platform that provides live time access for clients and employees.

The Company’s technology platform is best in class and includes dispatch interface, custom reporting, on-site payroll document printing, and client specific web portals for employees and company access. For more information, visit www.tlccompanies.com.

About SE Capital Partners, LLC
Founded in 2001, SE Capital utilizes a thesis-based investment process to create attractive investment themes and proactively seek out acquisition targets of complementary businesses to build a larger, more scalable company that benefits from diversifying capabilities, customers and geographies. SE Capital recently partnered with Berggruen Holdings, a multi-billion dollar single family office that is looking to deploy at least $400 million of equity capital over the next three to five years on change-of-control investments of niche market leaders in highly fragmented markets. For more information, visit www.secapital.com.

About Berggruen Holdings
Berggruen Holdings is the investment vehicle of The Nicolas Berggruen Charitable Trust. Over the last 20 years, Berggruen Holdings has made well over 100 investments using its own proprietary capital, which has allowed for longer investment horizons, flexibility in financing, and swift investment decisions. The private investment firm was founded by its Chairman Nicolas Berggruen, a philanthropist and investor. For more information, visit www.berggruenholdings.com.