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Former XPO chief Brad Jacobs builds $1 billion war chest for another acquisition run

Investor announces plan to take over software firm called SilverSun Technologies and use it to buy up targets in an unnamed industry

silversun Screen Shot 2023-12-04 at 12.57.21 PM.png
Ben Ames
By Ben AmesDec 04, 2023
Ben Ames
Ben Ames is Editor at Large and a Senior Editor at Supply Chain Xchange's sister publication, DC Velocity.
See Full Bio

Former XPO Logistics Inc. chief executive Brad Jacobs is reloading his quiver of arrows to start hunting for acquisition targets again, announcing today that he has invested nearly $1 billion in a software reseller called SilverSun Technologies Inc. and will convert the company into “a standalone platform for significant acquisitions in an industry to be announced soon.”

Beginning in 2012, Jacobs built XPO into a sprawling conglomerate of less-than-truckload (LTL) transportation, brokerage, and warehousing services before breaking it up again in 2021 into the independent companies XPO, GXO, and RXO.

His latest maneuver is to invest $900 million in cash from his Greenwich, Connecticut-based investment firm Jacobs Private Equity II LLC (JPE), along with another $100 million from minority co-investors including Sequoia Heritage, into East Hanover, New Jersey-based SilverSun.

That move will make JPE the majority stockholder of SilverSun and make Jacobs the company’s new chief executive officer and chairman of its board of directors. With that leverage, Jacobs said he plans to spin-off SilverSun’s existing business to its stockholders, rename the company, and convert the remaining organization into “a standalone platform for significant acquisitions in an industry to be announced soon,” he said in a release.

In a statement, Jacobs said, “I’m excited to start building another multibillion-dollar company from scratch. Soon, I’ll be providing more information about my new venture and industry, and the strategy we plan to execute.”

Today, SilverSun defines itself as a firm that provides management applications and professional consulting services to small and medium size businesses (SMBs) in the manufacturing, distribution, and service industries. More specifically, the SilverSun subsidiary SWK Technologies Inc. is a value-added reseller (VAR) for a number of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software vendors. Its customers include over 5,000 clients concentrated in the manufacturing, distribution, services, and construction industries as well as industries with high compliance demands such as healthcare and financial services.

The company’s current management and board of directors, including Mark Meller, SilverSun’s chief executive officer, are expected to continue in their current roles at the spin-off company and its subsidiaries.



 

 

 

 

 

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