Deal of the Month April 2018: Netwatch – Carlow firm seals global merger

Netwatch, an Irish security monitoring company, became Netwatch Global this month after merging with three other market-leading monitoring companies.

The global private equity firm The Riverside Company backed the merger, which will see Netwatch Global headquartered in Carlow with Irishman and founder of Netwatch, David Walsh, serving as CEO of Netwatch Global. Netwatch Group also appointed Samir Samhouri as Chairman of the company. Mr Samhouri previously developed the safety and security technologies company Xtralis to a global level.

Netwatch will more than double the number of its employees to 220 with the merger. The three other firms included are NMC (United States), CalAtlantic (United States) and Onwatch Multifire (United Kingdom). The UK headquarters will be in East Sussex, and the North American HQ will be in Lake Forest, California with satellite offices across Boston, New Jersey, Dallas, Houston, and Chicago. Walsh said:

The combined strengths of NMC, CalAtlantic, Onwatch Multifire and Netwatch – all leaders in their respective geographies, means that we can immediately deliver industry leading proprietary technologies in proactive visual monitoring to hundreds of thousands of clients who rely on us to protect lives, assets and business operations.

Technological advancements in securities monitoring

Netwatch Global CEO David Walsh

Netwatch is innovative in its approach to securities monitoring, with real-time visual verification of all potential alarms, real-time interactions with clients, police and other authorities, and vocal engagement with suspects. The company has always invested heavily in R&D, developing the proprietary Netwatch technology, and will continue to lead the way in this regard as part of Netwatch Global.

Monitoring the world

The new group protects hundreds of thousands of sites in the United States, United Kingdom, Europe, Middle East and Africa across a wide variety of industries including government, transportation, critical infrastructure (utilities, communications, energy), manufacturing, education, stadiums, finance, retail and residential and has contracted revenues in excess of €60 million.

CEO David Walsh said this about the need for Netwatch Global:

There is increased demand for visual monitoring from enterprise customers, driven by the continuing evolution of technology and advances such as AI, Deep Learning, 5G and IoT (Internet of Things). We have the proprietary technology, developed by our R&D team in Carlow to meet this demand.

Netwatch was the first company in Europe to combine specialist video processing technologies with satellite communications to provide preventative, immediate and cost effective protection solutions for clients. This deal will see them spread their wings across the whole of the globe.