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Justin Christian, founder and CEO of Indianapolis-based consulting and staffing firm BCforward, has reached an agreement to acquire New York-based information technology staffing firm TSR Inc. in a $29 million deal set to close later this year.
Christian has set up a new special purpose entity that will purchase all of TSR’s outstanding stock for $13.40 per share. The price represents a 73.8% premium over TSR’s May 14 closing price of $7.71 per share.
TSR is a publicly traded company that will go private via the acquisition.
The acquisition news was announced after the close of trading Wednesday, and later that evening, TSR shares soared to $13.11 in after-hours trading—up 69.4% from the stock’s closing price of $7.74.
Post-acquisition, TSR and its subsidiaries, Geneva Consulting Group and LOGIXtech Solutions, will become affiliates of BCforward and continue to operate as separate companies under their own names.
Founded in 1969, TSR is based in the New York City suburb of Hauppage and has more than 500 employees.
Christian said TSR’s longevity, its existing client base and its management team all made the company an attractive acquisition target.
“We just see a tremendous amount of opportunity to learn from one another,” he said.
And because TSR is such a well-established company with strong brand recognition, Christian said, it will continue to operate as a separate entity under its own name post-acquisition.
“It just made a lot of sense to allow them to continue to operate how they’ve been operating, and continue to provide great customer service as their customers have become used to,” he said.
TSR President and CEO Thomas Salerno said in a written statement that he was “extremely excited to join forces with the talented BCforward team and am confident that we have a long runway of growth ahead of us.
“Justin Christian and his team have cemented BCforward at the top of the industry, and TSR’s long-standing clients will receive the benefit of an immediate increase in services and offerings once our teams are operating under a common umbrella.”
BCforward is the doing-business-as name for Bucher and Christian Consulting Inc., which launched in 1998 and has grown to become one of the largest Black-owned professional services and workforce management services companies in the nation.
The company has more than 5,000 global employees, including nearly 1,000 in the Indianapolis area. The company offers business consulting, staffing and workforce management services to clients in the finance, life science, technology, health care and government sectors.
Last month, IBJ named Christian as the inaugural winner of its Mickey Maurer Entrepreneur of the Year Award for building BCforward.
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