Monday Interview: Chief executive of PE-backed Zenith discusses acquisitive growth

Tim Buchan

Leeds-based Zenith is one of the city’s major success stories.

With more than 650 staff and 115,000 vehicles, the leasing, fleet management and vehicle outsourcing business has continued to grow since it was established in 1989.

It joined forces with Leasedrive in 2014, and now operates three regional locations in Leeds, Crowthorne and Solihull.

It has a history of making strategic acquisitions (the latest being CVL as it looks to expand into the HGV market) and undergoing MBOs – having undertaken six buyouts in the past 14 years, making the news earlier this year after it was sold by HgCapital to private equity firm Bridgepoint from HgCapital for £750m.

Now, the leasing business is relocating to 60,000 sq ft offices at No 1 Kirkstall Forge to consolidate its businesses, and work on the technology that its growth has been built on.

Tim Buchan, chief executive officer, spoke to TheBusinessDesk.com following a year of change at the business.

“During that time, the business has continued to grow, we’ve bought three business since Provecta in 2008, in 2014 merged with Leasedrive which was a similar size to Zenith and in March we acquired CVL.

“Historically Zenith has focused on company cars, salary sacrifice car schemes, vans and hire cars and the servicing and managing of those. We saw an opportunity for a greater proposition.

“Everything we do here is strategic, focused on building high quality customer portfolios, and the culture of the companies we acquire has to be similar to the culture of Zenith.”

The combining of the businesses into one building will happen by the end of the year, he said, which will contribute to the growth of the business.

“In order to continue to build a quality workforce,” he said, “we need to draw from across the North of England. The Interchange in Leeds gives us the opportunity to recruit anywhere from York, Sheffield, Manchester, Huddersfield – all of those are captured which means we can have a much more diverse employee population.”

This focus on people shines through with Zenith’s employee ownership scheme, he said.

“Over the last three years, we’ve continued to employ the highest quality employees. Our employee ownership scheme makes us attractive to new employees and older employees alike. That’s one of our USPs. We are really young, dynamic, and can cater for a diverse employment base, with apprenticeship and graduate schemes.

“All-in-all we’ve got a very compelling environment, which is complemented in Kirkstall Forge.”

Though the company has made some strategic acquisitions, Buchan said they were looking at more conventional routes to growth.

“For us it’s business as usual. Our focus going forward is to organically grow, across all different asset types, and to do that with large corporate companies that enjoy and value the services we provide.”

It’s consolidation and organic growth on the cards for Zenith, he said. “With a focus on high-level of quality, the best workforce and innovative products for customers. We’re setup to reflect the economic cycle we’re going to be in.”

Even the current political upheaval across the globe isn’t shaking Zenith.

“We do have a pan-European partner network across 11 countries in the EU, and we do have very tight ties with our partners which enables us to deliver whatever we need, but not have to own companies in that group. It’s important to remain positive and continue to grow with the economy and the corporations that are our customers. Our business adjusts to reflect these changes.”

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