ETDE, the mechanical and electrical subsidiary of Bouygues Group, the $30bn French group spanning interests from construction, through roads, to mobile telephony and television has bought David Webster Limited, the street lighting and project management arm of the Hertfordshire-based David Webster Group.
ETDE is a major player in the French street-lighting market, maintaining around 450,000 lights across the country and is increasing its international presence in this sector. Gaetan Desruelles, the chairman and CEO of ETDE, said: “The acquisition of DWL fits perfectly our wish to develop in the UK lighting market and build on the success of Bouygues Construction in the UK hospital and schools PFI market. We have been working with DWL for some 15 months now and have great respect for their technical ability and our joint success in being selected as preferred bidder at the London Borough of Lambeth shows how well we can work together.”
David Webster, founder and chairman of David Webster Group, expressed his strong support for the move, saying: “We have seen a lot of changes in the industry over the past few years with the lion’s share of money going to the government’s Private Financing Initiative, PFI, and we expect this trend to continue. We demonstrated our ability to rise to this challenge in 1999 by winning London Borough of Brent, the first street-lighting PFI in the country.
As a relatively small company, we needed a strong partner to go further and by linking up with ETDE we have succeeded in being declared preferred bidder at Lambeth and pre-qualifying with several other authorities and I firmly believe that this is the right decision for the future wellbeing of the company and its employees.”
David Webster Group has now changed its name to DW Group Holdings and continues to own Weblight, the £12m internal lighting maintenance company supplying the retail and commercial market, and DW Windsor Lighting, the £10m Hoddesdon-based lighting manufacturing company, as well as its commercial property interests.