Paladin was formed in August 2004 following its acquisition of a small attachment company, ATI, in late 2003. The company experienced rapid growth during the following two years with the acquisition of seven leading brand companies and a manufacturing operation in Mexico. Today, Paladin employs 1,500 associates at fifteen manufacturing sites in the United States and Mexico and has a global sourcing operation located in Shanghai, China. The company’s products are sold through multiple channels, including dealers and distributors, rental companies, OEM, and end-use customers.

Paladin attachments are designed and produced for severe duty applications in very broad niches of the market segments it serves. These include general construction, road and infrastructure rebuilding, power and utility construction, site clearing and development, landscaping, material handling, scrap recycling, demolition, equipment conversion for special applications, mining, waterway maintenance, remodeling, and renovation work, among many others. The company’s products are sold under the well-recognized brands Bradco, McMillen, the Major, Harley, Sweepster, FFC, Magnum, JRB, C&P, Badger, Pengo, Genesis, Jewell, and Custom Works.
Paladin was originally formed through a venture funded by a private equity firm and members of its management team. Less than two years later, the equity sponsor decided to sell its portion of the company and launched an official sale process during the summer of 2005.

After the equity sponsor’s unexpected announcement to exit the company, Paladin’s management team became concerned about the ramifications of selling the company while midway in its plan to rapidly grow through multiple acquisitions. “We anticipated it would be a challenge to sell the company while still pursuing and integrating a number of acquisitions, and initiating and deploying a number of key operating improvement initiatives,” said Bill Van Sant, Paladin’s founder and current chairman and CEO. “In a sense, we were selling two parts—the start of a company that was still undergoing substantive change and the management team’s vision for the future potential of the company once completed. And we wanted to ensure, to the extent possible, that Paladin’s new owner would be a strategic rather than financial buyer.”
The sale of Paladin was announced in the fall of 2005, and a number of potential buyers were contacted to determine their interest. Dover was on the original list of possible strategic buyers. “I had been involved in selling a company, Warn Industries, to Dover in 2003, and based on my personal experience working with the Dover organization during the sale of Warn, and the very positive feedback that I received from the Warn management team over [the] three years subsequent to that sale, I believed, even before the sale process started, that Dover would be the best buyer of Paladin,” said Van Sant.

Why Dover? “First, Dover is a very successful and highly respected public company with a long history of solid financial performance. Most important, the company’s success is built on a longstanding foundation of core principles and values related to business conduct and treatment of associates that appealed to all of Paladin’s management team and associates across the company,” Van Sant said. “From my previous experience with Dover, I was excited about the prospect of Dover becoming our new buyer. Their fundamental business strategy is to acquire operating companies with strong management teams and outstanding brand recognition that serve broad segments of the economy and hold potential for long term organic and external growth while delivering superior return on investment. The acquired companies and their teams typically enjoy a great deal of stability and autonomy from the start. Further, Dover’s success results from a proven and efficient organizational model that vests a lot of autonomy, authority, and responsibility in each of its operating companies to conduct business in a manner best suited for the individual company.

“In short, Dover is a great example of a corporation that understands and believes in the concept of high-performance, team-based operations where individual operating teams have the autonomy and authority to deploy the strategies, resources, and capital required to maximize returns on investment. The company places high value on consistent year-over-year growth and improved performance, and is eager to provide capital to its operating companies to assist in achieving these objectives.”
Since joining Dover in August 2006, Paladin has been authorized to invest more than $15 million for acquisitions, facility expansions, modernizing operations, machines, processes, and systems. “I consider Dover a long-term investor that clearly understands the concept of building for the future. I know that I speak for each Paladin associate by saying Dover is an ideal owner of Paladin based on these and many other positive attributes. I have had the privilege of working in leadership roles at a number of public companies during my forty-year career, and in my judgment, Dover is one of the best. At the end of the day, I can’t think of another scenario that would have been better for Paladin and its organization,” Van Sant concluded.