History
The company in its current form was founded from the 1997 merger between the Benelux staffing firm Unique International B.V. and the publicly traded Goudsmit N.V., a holding company involved in various sectors including recruitment. The enlarged group changed its name to United Services Group N.V. in 2001.
In 2002 United Services Group acquired a controlling stake in the job agency Start Holding, which had been privatised by the Dutch government six years earlier. This was later expanded to full control. The deal gave USG an increased presence in countries such as Spain and Italy.
The company acquired smaller Belgian peer Solvus Resource Group for around €585 million in August 2005, after which it again changed its name to USG People N.V.
In late 2008 the company adopted a "poison pill" defence against potential acquisitors by issuing preference shares to a company foundation.
Read more about this topic: USG People
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“You treat world history as a mathematician does mathematics, in which nothing but laws and formulas exist, no reality, no good and evil, no time, no yesterday, no tomorrow, nothing but an eternal, shallow, mathematical present.”
—Hermann Hesse (1877–1962)
“All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and say, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior.”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“Psychology keeps trying to vindicate human nature. History keeps undermining the effort.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)