News

Davey Tree Acquires S&S Tree and Landscaping Specialists of St. Paul, Minnesota

KENT, OHIO — The Davey Tree Expert Company has acquired S&S Tree and Landscaping Specialists, the largest family-owned tree company in Minnesota and one of the most respected in the industry. The acquisition of S&S is Davey’s fifteenth in the past five years and is part of a larger growth and expansion strategy. Based in St. Paul, Minn., S&S provides tree, landscape and lawn services and will continue to operate under its existing name as a division of The Davey Company.  Louie Sylvester will assume the role of district manager of the office, while Tony Sylvester will serve as assistant … Read more

Wisconsin’s Bruce Co. Sells Maintenance, Snow Operations to Reliable, Focuses on Nursery and Landscape Operations

The Bruce Company, the nation’s 32nd largest landscape contract business and the largest in Wisconsin, today announced a strategic alliance with a well-known St. Paul-area company in a plan to help both partners thrive as the economy begins to grow again. Reliable Property Services LLC, the seventh largest snow and ice management company in the country headquartered in Eagan, Minn., with offices and customers throughout Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin, will combine its strengths with The Bruce Company’s national reputation and expertise in landscape design and construction, along with its 600-acre nursery operation in Verona, which will provide nursery stock to … Read more

2012 Year-End Report Shows Strong Impact of Fiscal Cliff on Business Transactions

“With many of the uncertainties of 2012 behind us, the outlook for the business-for-sale market may be improving.” .BizBuySell has released its latest economic data for the fourth quarter of 2012 and for the full-year 2012. The company’s data tracks trends in the sales of small business-for-sale and the latest data shows that closed transactions spiked significantly in the final three weeks of 2012 as the Fiscal Cliff deadline approached and higher taxes loomed. The results are based on aggregate business-for-sale transactions reported by participating business brokers nationwide. While the quarter started out slowly relative to Q4 2011, due to … Read more

McKinney Capital Acquires Grounds Unlimited

McKinney Capital of Birmingham has acquired Grounds Unlimited, also based in the Birmingham area. This is the third landscape company that McKinney has acquired.  McKinney acquired Environmental Landscape of Memphis in 2011, followed by Landscape Workshop, the largest landscape company in Alabama, approximately one year ago. Environmental Landscape was recently merged into Landscape Workshop.  McKinney plans to merge Grounds Unlimited into Landscape Workshop by the end of 2013. According to a report published in the Birmingham Business Journal, Grounds Unlimited was number four on its most recent list of the largest Birmingham-area landscapers.  Landscape Resources had 251 employees before adding … Read more

SBA Reaffirms Small Business Size Standard for Landscape Companies at $7 Million

  The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) recently re-evaluated the size standard to qualify as a small business for purposes of small-business set-asides in government contracting and small business assistance, including access to SBA loan programs for 37 industries in North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) Sector 56, Administrative and Support, Waste Management and Remediation Services. In the case of landscape services businesses (NAICS code 561730), the SBA re-affirmed the existing size standard of $7 million in average annual receipts over the preceding three years. In the case of pest control businesses (NAICS code 561710), the SBA increased the size … Read more