London-based Babcock International agreed to buy Avincis, the owner of Bond Aviation Group, for £920million to expand in helicopter services.
Under terms of the deal the British multinational support services firm will also absorb £705million of Avincis debt, it said in a statement today.
Babcock said that Avincis was attractive for its mission-critical helicopter services in the medical, search and rescue and firefighting sectors, which dovetail with its own focus on critical engineering and support activities.
Avincis, which is also based in London, had a contract backlog worth about 2.3billion euros (£1.9billion) at the end of last year.
“Avincis does exactly what we do, but in helicopters,” said Peter Rogers, Babcock chief executive.
“These aren’t activities that government clients can do without, despite austerity, except in absolute extremis.”
At the end of last year Avincis had a fleet of 343 aircraft operating from more than 200 bases, comprising about 300 rotorcraft and 40 fixed-wing models.
Emergency services contribute about 75% of the business’s £484million of annual revenue, with crew-change flights for oil and gas rigs constituting an important part of the firm’s North Sea operations, also targeting Norwegian and Australian offshore markets.