SGS Targets Growth with One Acquisition Per Month, New CEO Says

The world’s largest industrial testing, inspection and certification company wants to accelerate its expansion with acquisitions, its new chief executive officer told Le Temps.

“We want to focus on acquisitions, making an average of one a month,” SGS SA’s Geraldine Picaud said in an interview with the Swiss newspaper on Saturday. “In a fragmented growth market, the winners are those who aggregate. So we want to make more synergy-generating acquisitions.”

SGS, which counts the late Sergio Marchionne as one of its previous leaders, didn’t generate enough cash in the past, she added, and must now improve on this front ...