Five years ago when Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough partner Rhys Wilson was giving a speech at a law-related event, the owner of a Suwanee-based systems integration company came up to him and said, “I’m thinking of selling my business.”
Earlier this month, Wilson helped Joseph Ciotti, the president of Richardson Technology Systems Inc., do just that. South Western Communications, based in Newburgh, Ind., bought Richardson for an undisclosed amount, forming the new SWC-Richardson Technology Systems.
The deal brings together two companies with a focus on integrating security and communications systems in diverse settings.
Wilson said his client, which was founded some 40 years ago, initially launched its business by installing intercom systems in schools. Now, it sets up systems for security passcards, cameras, video monitoring, professional sound systems for meeting rooms, bedside nurse-call buttons in hospitals and cellphone paging systems for doctors and nurses.
“They’ll take all the different systems that other companies have that are placed in buildings and help them talk to each other and work together,” said Wilson. “It’s all that boring stuff that nobody cares about until it’s not working.”
South Western, which is a portfolio company of Koch Enterprises, an Evansville, Ind., private holding company, focuses on integrating systems technology in commercial, industrial and prisons/detention facility settings, as well as in the healthcare and educational sectors served by Richardson.
Wilson said the companies knew each other because each had customers with locations in the other’s territory and “they had to learn to share.” The CEOs knew and liked one another, Wilson said, and this helped the deal come together in just four or five months.
In addition to Wilson, other Nelson Mullins lawyers who worked on the deal were of counsel David K. Goldberg and associate Hemant Dutta.
South Western was represented by David Sanders of Fine & Hatfield in Evansville.