NSL up for sale ...but what's it worth?

Car clampers coin it
Ben Marlow
The Sunday Times
May 30, 2010

Clamping cars and handing out parking tickets is about to pay off handsomely for the owners of NSL Services, a company that has been put up for auction for about £130m. NSL is being sold by 3i, the private equity firm. Senior managers have a small stake in the business. It clamps cars and issues tickets for council and private-sector clients, including Arsenal football club, where it manages parking around the Emirates Stadium.

The company was originally part of National Car Parks, for which 3i paid £555m in 2005. Two years later, the buyout firm split the company and sold the larger off-street car parks business to Australia’s Macquarie Bank for £790m, retaining NSL. The deal upset the trade unions, which accused 3i of asset-stripping the business.

The private equity firm also tried to sell NSL separately but pulled the deal because it couldn’t get the price it wanted. Several rivals were interested at the time, including Mitie, the outsourcing company, and Apcoa, Britain’s biggest provider of car parks and parking enforcement services.

NSL Services has deals with about 60 councils, including Westminster, as well as Heathrow and Gatwick airports, and sporting venues such as Twickenham and Murrayfield. Alongside the traffic-wardens business, NSL operates six London bus routes and runs a debt-recovery arm. It also has a network of CCTV cameras.

Hawkpoint, the corporate- finance boutique, has been appointed to find a buyer. NSL’s most recent accounts, for the year ending 2008, show it had accrued losses of £23m on turnover of £148m.