Skip to main content

Thales to sell its revenue collection, tolling, car park management business

International technology company Thales has entered into exclusive negotiations with French private equity firm Latour Capital with a view to divesting its ticketing and revenue collection, road tolling and car park management systems business, in line with the company’s strategy of business portfolio optimisation. With close to 850 employees mainly based in France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, Mexico, Hong Kong, India, New Zealand and Egypt, this business generated sales of US$165 million (€155 mil
November 18, 2016 Read time: 2 mins
International technology company 596 Thales has entered into exclusive negotiations with French private equity firm Latour Capital with a view to divesting its ticketing and revenue collection, road tolling and car park management systems business, in line with the company’s strategy of business portfolio optimisation.

With close to 850 employees mainly based in France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, Mexico, Hong Kong, India, New Zealand and Egypt, this business generated sales of US$165 million (€155 million) in 2015.

Latour Capital is a French private equity firm with a strong entrepreneurial focus. It is mainly financed by major institutional investors. This acquisition would be an industrial development project designed to drive growth and employment.

Rail signalling, communication and supervision systems activities are at the core of the Group’s businesses and technologies and account for close to 90 per cent of the Group's Ground Transportation Systems revenues and are not affected by this project.

According to Philippe Keryer, executive vice-president, Strategy, Research and Technologies, the project is part of Thales’ business portfolio management and contributes to focusing the Group on the areas in line with its growth strategy. “By entering into exclusive negotiations with Latour Capital, we have selected an entrepreneurial project that will create value by leveraging the expertise and advanced technologies developed by this business," he said.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • New ticketing system for Dakar's 100% electric BRT
    June 4, 2024
    Riders in Senegal's capital can use Calypso cards, contactless tickets and QR code tickets
  • Integrating traffic management and tolling technologies
    April 25, 2013
    Jamie Surkont, head of road safety enforcement with Kapsch, outlines the company’s efforts to set up and align new traffic management business units with its more widely recognised tolling expertise The blurring of ITS applications’ edges brought about by systems’ increasing functionalities will ensure that many of the technologies which we have come to rely on for road and traffic management will find it increasingly difficult to exist or operate within tight market verticals. At the same time, systems man
  • 'Conservatism hampering ITS technical evolution'
    November 13, 2012
    Nick Lanigan, managing director of Clearview Traffic, considers the current outlook in the ITS sector from an SME's perspective. Interview with Jason Barnes. When times are hard, businesses can invest or cut. Either way, they need guidance from customers – governments – on where best to concentrate their efforts. Prolonged economic slowdown is currently an issue. A short recession, however sharp, would have left many industry players able to ride the bow-wave of governments’ multi-year spending on strategic
  • Geotoll’s payment app could be the smart answer to tolling interoperability
    July 30, 2013
    Jon Masters looks at a smartphone app which could be the ‘disruptive technology’ that eases the way to interoperability in tolling systems. Consumer demand may soon drive the biggest step change yet in tolling. In the United States a new start-up company, Geotoll, has launched a smartphone app for electronic toll payment. It is not beyond possibility that rapid growth of the market for smartphones will continue – an estimated 50% of US citizens and 80% of Europeans now have one – and that the Geotoll brand