Leading gaming testing company Gaming Laboratories International announced that it has acquired Canada’s Bulletproof Solutions, Inc., a trusted IT services company with a strong and growing portfolio of successful contract and project services. The investment further underscores the GLI Group’s commitment to Canada, and in particular, New Brunswick and the Atlantic Provinces, the company said.
The GLI Group announced that, as part of the acquisition, the entire leadership team and executives at Bulletproof, including the senior management team led by Steven Burns, Jeff Shaw and Andrew Jefferies, will continue to operate the company just as they have since inception. Both companies plan to leverage Bulletproof’s strong IT services capabilities throughout other provinces in Canada and in the United States.
In addition to traditional and core market clients in the public and commercial sectors that Bulletproof serves today, Bulletproof’s offering of IT services will be available immediately to gaming, lotteries and voting machine-related companies—all sectors where the GLI Group maintains a dominant market share of testing-related services.
“This is the ideal scenario for Bulletproof to take it to the next level,” said Bulletproof CEO Steven Burns. “We’ve done a good job growing our company to over 80 people in Atlantic Canada; we have a strong foundation of great processes and especially excellent people. GLI Group immediately saw the awesome potential we have to become more, and wants to nurture that potential into growth and success for Bulletproof.”
In selecting GLI to be its shareholder, Burns commented, “Personally, I became convinced that the GLI Group was our ideal partner due to their track record of successfully investing in and building industry-leading businesses focused on providing best-in-class services to clients and customers, and their commitment to New Brunswick and Canada.”
James Maida, GLI Group’s principal owner, said, “We’re very pleased to invest in Bulletproof and their management team. While the GLI Group has businesses globally, the Atlantic Canada region is critically important to our strategy. The Bulletproof team has done an impressive job building a globally competitive company in New Brunswick. We’re excited about the opportunity to expand Bulletproof throughout Canada and globally with New Brunswick as the base of operations.
“This is great for us and it’s great for Atlantic Canada because we see opportunities to expand into markets across Canada and the rest of the world. Atlantic Canada is a great place to do business, and an ideal place to concentrate some key centralized services Bulletproof provides. We’re going to deliver those services to a wider export market across the world. At the same time, we see an opportunity in parallel for on the ground operations to expand into other key regions of Canada and the U.S. which will only further strengthen the GLI Group and Bulletproof’s market position and success.”
Maida added that GLI is committed to jobs and growth in the Maritimes. “Given the province’s recent announcement on the development of their cyber-security strategy, we (GLI) see great potential in being part of the implementation and growth opportunity by investing in existing infrastructure and competencies in the region,” he said. “We find great synergies investing our capital there.”
