Type Public Industry Service | Traded as NYSE: SERV | |
Founded Downers Grove, Illinois, USA 1929, incorporated 1947 Headquarters Memphis, Tennessee, USA Number of locations More than 7,000 company-owned, franchised and licensed locations | ||
ServiceMaster Global Holdings, Inc., is a public Fortune 1000 company that provides residential and commercial services. Its headquarters are located in Memphis, Tennessee after moving there from Downers Grove, Illinois in early 2007. Brands operated by ServiceMaster include: Terminix, American Home Shield, ServiceMaster Clean, ServiceMaster Restore, Merry Maids, AmeriSpec and Furniture Medic. The core services of the company include termite and pest control, home warranties, disaster response and restoration, janitorial service, professional home cleaning, furniture repair, and home inspections.
Contents
ServiceMaster has more than 7,000 company-owned and franchise locations around the world. It has 13,000 corporate employees and a franchise network that independently employs over 33,000 additional people.
History
ServiceMaster was founded by Marion E. Wade, a minor league baseball player, as a moth-proofing company in Chicago, Illinois. It was incorporated in 1947 and expanded to franchised carpet cleaning in 1952. Its movement into business services makes it a large outsourcing company.
In the 1980s, the company experienced further expansion of the consumer segment of the business. During this time, ServiceMaster built on its original franchise business to form a network of branch and franchise-based service companies – including Terminix, TruGreen and Merry Maids – and other category-leading commercial and residential service brands, including American Home Shield. In 2001, ServiceMaster divested its management services businesses to focus more on its residential and commercial business.
In July 2007, a group of equity sponsors led by Clayton, Dubilier and Rice (CD&R) acquired ServiceMaster and took the company private. In the same year, the company moved its headquarters from Downers Grove, Ill., to Memphis, Tenn., to better enable the corporate staff to work with all of its business units. Robert J. Gillette was appointed chief executive officer in June 2013.
As of January 1, 2014, TruGreen is no longer a brand of ServiceMaster, opting instead to remain a privately held company.
On June 25, 2014, ServiceMaster Global Holdings, Inc., the parent of The ServiceMaster Company, LLC, announced that it had priced an initial public offering of 35,900,000 shares of common stock at $17.00 per share. The shares began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on June 25, 2014 under the ticker symbol SERV. The Company continues to be majority owned by private equity firms Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, StepStone Group and Ridgemont Equity Partners, and JPMorgan Chase Funding.
In June 2016, ServiceMaster announced a relocation of their global headquarters from East Memphis to Peabody Place in Downtown Memphis. Completion is expected by the end of 2017.
Brands
American Home Shield
American Home Shield, though its wholly owned subsidiaries, currently services more than 2 million customers across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The company administers home warranties for major home systems and appliances and works through a network of over 11,000 independent home-service contractors -- the largest in the country. In 2013 American Home Shield received HomeWarrantyReviews.com's 'Best in Service' Award.
On July 24, 2007 a lawsuit was filed against American Home Shield alleging that "American Home Shield engaged in a pattern and practice of failing to fulfill its contractual obligation to its customers". In February 2008 American Home Shield announced a proposed settlement.