Taylor Young sold to Canadian IBI Group

Toronto-based architecture and engineering firm IBI Group has bought Taylor Young, the Cheshire-based architectural and masterplanning practice, for an undisclosed sum.

Taylor Young has offices in Wilmslow, Liverpool and London and has a strong public sector client base in healthcare, education, housing, as well as urban planning and landscape design.

The firm currently has 100 staff and reported turnover of £6.4m in 2011 and pre-tax profit of £780,000.

IBI Group has 3,500 staff and announced turnover of $86.9m in the first quarter of 2012, with gross profit of $11.4m.

Philip Beinhaker, chairman director and chief executive of IBI Group, said: "Taylor Young has a very broad range of clients in the public sector with over 70% of the business gained on a repeat basis with long established client relationships."

Stephen Gleave added: "This is a strategic move for Taylor Young, including its owners, lead managers and professional staff in becoming a member firm within the IBI group of firms. It increases our capacity in professional resources to serve our many clients with the largest of projects and with broader skills that complement our existing breadth. It opens opportunities for our talented staff to participate in projects around the globe through IBI's established global strategy of work sharing and deployment through the intelligent systems of the firm. In short, it opens strategic opportunities at multiple levels for the future of the Taylor Young Family."

Rod King said: "We are all so excited about the collaboration that we will be able to achieve with our colleagues within the IBI Group – Nightingale Associates practice [with an office in Liverpool].

"Together, the two practices will be even more strongly established in the health and education opportunities in the UK. Our expertise in urban design, urban planning and landscape, will also now have broader markets in which to participate in the UK."

Taylor Young was incorporated as a company in 1989 and has three majority shareholders; managing director Stephen Gleave, director architect Rod King and consultant architect David Gardner. Paul Rushton and Alan Simpson, both director architects, are minority shareholders.

The new trading name will be IBI Taylor Young.