Kelly Capital Offers $45.9M for Mace Security

Jan. 25, 2007
Mace tidies up business for investment or sale as it divests car washes, focuses on security

Investment group Kelly Capital, a national real estate and business investor owned by brothers Michael and Richard Kelly, wants to get into the security Business.

The company is working to find a way in with the acquisition of Mace Security International, a company with car washes, security cameras and personal deterrent sprays. Mace was reported in the Philadelphia Business Journal on January 18 to have received an offer for $45.9 million for its company by the Kelly brothers investment firm.

Sales and acquisitions have been a normal thing lately for Mace, which has been trying to divest itself of its carwash businesses, a move it has been trying to make since December of 2004. The car wash businesses are an odd fit for a company who is better known for its Mace-brand pepper sprays, its Vernex lines of CCTV monitors, and its small line of cameras, including vandalproof and weatherproof cameras. In December, as a move to focus the company on security, Mace inked a deal to sell its Arizona car washes for $19.25 million. The previous month, the company was able to sell four of its car washes in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Mace has made no statements regarding potential sale of its machine vision/industrial vision business, which would presumably stay with its security/surveillance business.

According to the Philadelphia Business Journal, Kelly Capital was offering almost $3 a share for the company's roughly 15.3 million shares, and Mace executives had agreed to review the offer.