6 May 2016 | Jamie Harris

Servest and Atalian are to form a joint venture (JV) partnership, which both organisations say will enable them to provide integrated facilities services across Europe.

The JV is to be owned equally, and will operate as Atalian Servest Ltd.

Atalian is a facilities services provider based in France. In January this year it expanded into the North American market with its acquisition of Temco Facility Services.

Servest is an FM provider operating across 7,000 sites in the UK.

While the businesses will continue to operate independently, the JV is to be utilised for contract opportunities where both have an operational presence, including in the UK.

A statement explained that the venture has been set up to “capitalise on both organisations strong operational reputations in their respective markets and expand their current offer to existing and new customers across country boundaries”.

Rob Legge, Servest Group CEO UK and Europe, said: “The world is becoming a smaller place and we have seen that businesses are now looking for unified solutions that bring their communities together. We wanted to offer our customers a pan-European solution with a partner that operates with the same cultural and business philosophies as adopted by Servest in the UK.”

Matthieu de Baynast, president, Atalian International, said: “​Both organisations have very like-minded business approaches based on an entrepreneurial strategy where organic and acquisitive growth are of equal importance.”