Wauwatosa-based IT staffing and consulting firm Omni Resources Inc. has been acquired at auction by Chicago-based Saggezza.
Omni in February entered receivership proceedings, and on March 14 the sale of certain assets of the company was approved in Milwaukee County Court. On March 15, Saggezza beat out several other bidders to acquire most of Omni’s assets for an undisclosed price, said Arvind Kapur, chief executive officer of Saggezza.
Most of Omni’s 35 employees have been retained, and about 90 percent of its assets, Kapur said. The Milwaukee office will remain open as Omni Resources, a Saggezza company.
Saggezza is a global management consulting and technology services provider. With the acquisition of Omni Resources, it has expanded its reach in the Midwest. Saggezza now has offices in Chicago; Milwaukee; Santa Clara, California; Bangalore and Chennai, India; and London and Sunderland, UK.
“In the broader Wisconsin market, we have over the past year, started developing a presence in Detroit and the Midwest,” Kapur said. “The Midwest has a whole slew of midmarket companies hungry for that kind of advice … to help transform their business.”
Omni had taken on a larger debtload than it could service, Kapur said. In 2013, the U.S. Department of Labor sued former Omni owners Veronica Mueller and trusts benefitting Roger Mueller and her children over their 2008 sale of Omni Resources to an Employee Stock Ownership Plan for “more than the stock’s fair market value and without proper valuation of the stock,” according to court records. The DOL alleged an ERISA violation, and the case was settled in December 2017. Omni Resources, which was founded by Roger Mueller in 1984, was not a party in the case.
Following the acquisition, Omni will have access to additional resources and skillsets, and can expand its reach in Wisconsin, Kapur said.
“We want to build, so we’re hoping to increase the size of this,” Kapur said. “What we like is they have a long history, so they have a lot of relationships, a lot of longstanding relationships.”
Kapur did not have a specific hiring number in mind for the Milwaukee office. Saggezza has about 125 employees, and is currently working to hire another 40 to 50 employees across its workforce as demand for its services increases.
“Every business in general is having to improve their digital footprint, if you will,” Kapur said. “People who traditionally didn’t think of technology as really a core part of their business have had to rethink that.”
“We’re excited to join forces with Saggezza,” said Brent Otto, chief financial officer of Omni. “For 35 years, we’ve been dedicated to serving the Wisconsin community and that’s only going to continue. Our customers are going to be interacting with the same friendly faces they’ve been working with for years, but now they’re going to have the tools, global insights and technical leadership of Saggezza behind us.”
