The story
Company history
The first three decades
Deutscher Inkasso-Dienst (DID), the nucleus of the group, was established in 1974 as a spin-off of the legal department of Otto-Versand (now: OTTO). The company dealt with collecting outstanding receivables for Otto-Versand and also for non-group companies. Early on, the service provider focused on correspondence and dialogue with defaulting payers and on the acquisition of external clients. In the 1980s and 1990s, the company grew through acquisitions in Germany, through expansion in Europe, and through expansion of its range of services.
In 2000 the EOS Holding was established, introducing the umbrella brand EOS. The company entered the US when it took over Collecto in 2001, a company founded in 1992. In 2004 the group established a special company for medical debt recovery, EOS Health Honorarmanagement AG, which established itself over the following years particularly as a service provider for dental practices.
Since 2005
In July 2005 the group acquired a majority stake in Europe Matrix Financial Services S.A. with operations in Greece, Bulgaria, Macedonia and Serbia. In fiscal 2007/08 it entered Russia, China and the Benelux countries. At the same time the group acquired a stake in direct marketing specialist CoXulto (Stuttgart). By the end of this period the group had almost 3,500 employees. In 2009 the group purchased the Spanish debt collection service provider Acción de Cobro from Banco Pastor. It entered the Croatian market by establishing EOS Matrix d.o.o. Thanks to a majority shareholding in WCF Finetrading AG, the group expanded its activities in commodity pre-financing, a business segment that the company then relinquished in 2017.
A location in Ukraine was established in 2010. In the same year, the company strengthened its presence in the USA through the acquisition of True North AR. This was followed in 2011 by the purchase of a majority stake in Hoepers Recuperadora de Crédito S.A, a debt collection service provider in Brazil. Since April 2011 the company has also been offering its services in France following its takeover of debt collection company Credirec. The group acquired the Canadian debt collection company Nor-Don Collection Network (NCN) in 2011. In 2013 the group took over the debt collection unit of Spanish bank Banco Popular, and purchased the company SAF Forderungsmanagement from Deutsche Telekom. In 2015 it acquired the Swisscom debt collection subsidiary Alphapay. At the end of 2015 EOS and Euler Hermes sold Bürgel to CRIF. The group strengthened its market position in France and Belgium in 2016 through the purchase of Contentia.
In 2016 the group took on an administrative role (Verwaltungshelfer) for the recovery of outstanding debts for the administrative district of Wittenberg, and acted in a similar way in the same year for the Bundesagentur für Arbeit. The city of Essen engaged three debt collection service providers in 2016 including EOS.
On 1 March 2017 Klaus Engberding became Chairman of the Board of Directors of EOS Holding GmbH. He succeeded Hans-Werner Scherer, who had led the group for many years.
At the end of 2018, the Group sold Health AG and the Swiss Zahnärztekasse AG to BAWAG P.S.K.
On February 1, 2022, Marwin Ramcke took over as CEO.
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Financial information
The group's fiscal year begins – like that of the Otto Group – on 1 March and ends on 28 February of the following year, or 29 February in leap years. In 2019/20 the company achieved a revenue of 853,1 million euros. Since 2005, credit rating agency Euler Hermes Rating has consistently awarded EOS Holding the rating A.
From Wikipedia’s article on EOS Group, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5