SGS Is In Talks to Combine With French Testing Firm Bureau Veritas

-- SGS SA is in advanced talks to combine with Bureau Veritas SA, people with knowledge of the matter said, in a deal that would create a European testing and certification company with a combined market value of almost $35 billion. Geneva-based SGS and France’s Bureau Veritas are working on the final details of a transaction that could be announced in the coming weeks, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing confidential information. Any deal would need the support of investment firm Wendel SE, which is Bureau Veritas’s largest shareholder with a 26.5% stake, Bloomberg-compiled data show. Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Stuart Gordon and Evgeniy Batchvarov wrote in a note in November that SGS’s new chief executive officer, Géraldine Picaud, appeared to be more aggressive on mergers and acquisitions, as the company seeks to reverse broad share-price underperformance versus its testing, inspection and certification peers over the past decade.