“There are no synergies of people,” Booth said when asked about potential cuts. “This is an investment by Sodexo. It’s very good news.”
Terms of the acquisition were not released. Acquisition talks took nine months, Booth said.
Comfort Keepers provides in-home services for seniors and people in need of in-home care. Services include companionship, meal preparation and assistance with hygiene, exercise and other needs.
Comfort Keepers is a franchise business with a network of 567 franchise units throughout the United States. In the Dayton area, Booth said franchisees have about 500 employees. The company has more than 40 franchises in Ohio, he said.
The company’s Poe Avenue headquarters will be maintained, Booth said.
Nationally, the company has about 20,000 employees.
Amélie Salles, a Sodexo spokesperson based in France, wrote in an email to the Dayton Daily News that it was Sodexo’s goal to become the “premier global outsourcing expert in quality-of-life services.”
“Regarding the day-to-day activity (of Comfort Keepers), franchisees will experience only minor and positive changes,” Salles wrote. “They will keep operating their business as usual. Their contacts within Comfort Keepers home office will remain the same since the entire Comfort Keepers leadership and corporate office team will stay intact.”
“With this acquisition, Sodexo reinforces its quality-of-life services offering to seniors as well as its global leadership in the seniors segment, in which it generated global revenue of 800 million euro in fiscal 2008,” Sodexo said in its statement.
Sodexo focuses on food and facilities management services, with more than 355,000 employees on 30,600 sites in 80 countries.
For fiscal year 2008, Sodexo had revenue of 13.6 billion euro, the company said.
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