Marco, a St. Cloud success story that started in 1973 as a typewriter company and steadily expanded throughout the Upper Midwest, has been sold to a Twin Cities equity investment firm.
Marco's CEO, Jeff Gau, made the announcement Friday in an interview with the St. Cloud Times. Marco employees, who own the company, were notified Thursday of the sale.
Minneapolis-based Norwest Equity Partners, the private equity offshoot of Wells Fargo, is acquiring Marco, which employs 920 people in 42 locations in Minnesota, Illinois, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin and Nebraska. The sale closed Friday.
Gau said Marco headquarters, where 340 employees work, will remain in St. Cloud. Its name and leadership team will remain the same. No employees will be laid off, and the company plans to expand. It will add a 30,000-square foot building adjacent to its St. Cloud headquarters next year, he said.
"The last thing we want to do is wreck a good thing," Gau said.
Timing is everything, Gau said, and the time was right for a sale. Marco has been employee-owned since 1989, which has been successful. But as the company's stock value has grown and older employees look to retire, it's getting more expensive to buy their stock back, Gau said. read the rest here