Twenty years after taking one Jacksonville staffing company public, Derek Dewan is about to become CEO of another publicly traded staffing business.
General Employment Enterprises Inc. on Friday announced an agreement to buy Scribe Solutions Inc., a Jacksonville-based company that provides medical scribes, who offer patient documentation services for physicians.
Dewan, former chairman and CEO of Jacksonville-based MPS Group Inc., joined Scribe in September as chairman and CEO. He will become chairman and CEO of Naperville, Ill.-based General Employment after the acquisition is completed.
In addition to Dewan’s appointment, Scribe President Alex Stuckey will become president and chief operating officer of General Employment. Scribe founder Mary Claire Menze will be president of Scribe, which will operate as a subsidiary of General Employment.
Current General Employment CEO Andrew Norstrud will be chief financial officer of the company after the merger.
Although its top executives will be located in Jacksonville, Dewan said Friday that no decisions have been made about moving the headquarters office from Illinois.
“I really have to look at the whole operation and see what makes sense,” he said. “We’ll have a good presence here.”
He said General Employment’s office staff in Illinois is small. “They really have pared down their headquarters,” he said.
Scribe was founded by Menze in 2008.
“It’s not too dissimilar from the AccuStaff story at all,” Dewan said.
AccuStaff, the company that evolved into MPS, was a Jacksonville staffing company founded by Delores Kesler that eventually grew into a major business. Dewan was brought in as CEO in 1993 as the company prepared to go public in 1994.
Dewan was still chairman of MPS when it was bought out by Adecco Group in 2010.
Dewan said Menze and Stuckey approached him during the summer when they were looking to grow Scribe.
“They wanted to take it to the next level,” he said.
Dewan said he couldn’t disclose Scribe’s financial data before it is made public as part of the merger process, but he said the company is doing well.
“We run a pretty lean ship and we’re profitable, highly profitable,” he said.
General Employment reported revenue of $30.4 million and a net loss of $1.6 million for the nine months ended Sept. 30.
The company, which traces its roots to an employment agency founded in 1893, provides professional staffing services and solutions and light industrial staffing services.
“The acquisition of Scribe brings to General Employment sustained profitability, one of the best CEOs in the industry and entry into the growing healthcare staffing market. With the addition of Derek’s expertise, we will accelerate our efforts to build out the company’s service offerings in the professional and other staffing segments,” Norstrud said in a news release.
Dewan said he will be looking to broaden General Employment’s staffing services.
“We think we can beef it up across the board,” he said.
General Employment is buying Scribe by issuing preferred stock valued at $6.4 million to $7.9 million. The companies hope to complete the deal in the first quarter of 2015.
“We’re pretty happy about it and we’re going to move forward,” Dewan said.
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