Six years, one industry, a lot fewer owners

Published 15 September 2026

In 2020 the largest elevator company in Germany was still a division of a steel maker and Otis was still a line on United Technologies' balance sheet. Six years later the ownership of the trade looks nothing like that, and the change runs all the way down to the parts bin and the inspection report.

Across Asia Pacific, the biggest elevator market in the world, four companies sell more than 55 percent of the elevators and escalators. The four are Otis, Schindler, KONE and TK Elevator. If the deal announced this spring closes, they become three.

Underneath that, private equity has spent the same six years buying the independent service companies that used to be the alternative to the majors, then the parts makers those independents depend on, and most recently the firms that inspect everyone's work.

The top of the ladder

On 31 July 2020 thyssenkrupp finished selling its entire elevator business to a consortium led by Advent International and Cinven for 17.2 billion euros, the largest private-equity buyout in Europe in a decade. The business was renamed TK Elevator the following February. thyssenkrupp kept a minority stake.

Three months earlier, on 3 April 2020, United Technologies had spun Otis out as a standalone public company after 44 years. Otis then bought out the 49.9 percent of Spain's Zardoya Otis it didn't already own, for around 3.39 billion euros, and picked up Detroit Elevator in June 2021.

On 29 April 2026 KONE announced it would buy TK Elevator for 29.4 billion euros in cash and shares. Advent and Cinven, who paid 17.2 billion in 2020, get newly issued KONE stock and, once the deal closes, two board seats. KONE's shareholders approved it on 3 June. No regulator has. The US Department of Justice issued a second request in August, the formal in-depth review that usually runs a year. On 9 September the two companies filed with India's competition regulator, telling it the deal raises no concern there. In May a European Commission spokesperson said the deal hadn't been formally notified yet. KONE doesn't expect to close before the second quarter of 2027.

Two groups have said they'll fight it. Schindler's CEO told Reuters in March, before the deal was signed, that the company was ready to oppose a KONE takeover of TKE before antitrust authorities. IndustriALL, the global union federation that signed a framework agreement with TK Elevator in 2021, says the announcement breached it. Workers learned of the sale from the financial press and an email from the CEO. IG Metall's president said anyone supporting the merger must also guarantee jobs and locations. IndustriALL's general secretary said the unions won't cooperate with the integration unless the agreements are honoured.

Fujitec is in the same position TK Elevator was in from 2020 to 2026. In March the Swedish fund EQT took it private and delisted it from Tokyo. It's now owned by investors whose business is to sell.

The independents stopped being independent

The pitch of an independent elevator company was a local owner and no proprietary lock-in. The pitch hasn't changed. The ownership has.

In October 2020 the private-equity firm Arcline Investment Management bought American Elevator Group, which dates itself to 1902. Arcline's stated plan was to expand across North America by buying independents. D&D Elevator, Kencor, Jersey Elevator and Unitec now sit under the AEG name, which calls itself the largest independent service provider on the continent.

In June 2021 Berkshire Partners bought 3Phase Elevator of Canton, Massachusetts, from an earlier private-equity owner. 3Phase had already bought six other independents, four of them in the previous twelve months. Six months later it merged with Specialized Elevator, another private-equity platform, to form what it called the largest nationwide independent union elevator company in the United States: more than 390 IUEC members and over 20,000 units under contract.

"Independent" now means independent of the four manufacturers. It doesn't mean independent of private equity.

Canada has seen less of this. The biggest independents here are still privately held, Richmond Elevator in BC among them, and its first-contract fight with IUEC Local 82 is the closest thing to a labour story the Canadian independents have produced.

Then they bought the parts

An independent contractor depends on non-proprietary parts. If the only door operator that fits is the OEM's, the OEM holds the maintenance contract in everything but name. So the second wave went after the suppliers.

GAL Manufacturing in the Bronx, the door operator maker, was bought by Golden Gate Capital in June 2017 along with Hollister-Whitney, the Illinois machine maker. In September 2018 they were combined with GAL Canada, Courion, Bore-Max and Elevator Controls into Vantage Elevator Solutions, run by GAL's chief executive, Mark Boelhouwer. In October 2021 the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan bought a majority of it.

Two years after Vantage was formed, the same Mark Boelhouwer joined Arcline to build American Elevator Group. Arcline then went after the supply side as well. In January 2022 it bought five parts and controls suppliers at once, Standard Elevator Systems, EMI Porta, ZZIPCO, Texacone and Elevator Equipment Company, and combined them as Standard Elevator. One fund now owns a large share of the independent contractors and a large share of what they buy.

The accessibility end of the trade went the same way. Savaria of Laval, Quebec closed its purchase of Sweden's Handicare in March 2021 for about 452 million dollars, which took it to roughly 2,300 employees and made it one of the largest stairlift makers in the world.

And now the inspectors

ATIS of St. Louis was founded in 2012 as an elevator inspection company. In September 2024 Thompson Street Capital Partners became its majority owner, with a stated plan to grow by acquisition. ATIS then bought Technical Inspection Agency USA in Nevada, Vermont Elevator Inspection Services that November, and on 24 August 2026 AuditMate, the software platform building owners use to audit their elevator contractors. ATIS now calls itself one of North America's largest providers of elevator compliance and consulting.

One company now inspects the equipment, consults on the maintenance contract, and sells the software that grades the contractor, and it's owned by a fund whose plan is to sell it on.

The one going the other way

In July 2022 Otis sold its entire Russian business, including the St. Petersburg plant, to a local buyer for a reported 61 million US dollars. It was renamed Meteor Lift. This month the Russian state housing corporation Dom.RF, which already owned the Shcherbinsky elevator plant, bought Meteor Lift for a reported 8 to 9 billion rubles (Kommersant, in Russian). What used to be Otis Russia is now a state elevator company. It took sanctions and a war to run consolidation backwards.

What it means on the job

The NEBA agreement that covers IUEC mechanics at the majors runs to 2027 whoever owns the company. But a private-equity owner works to a clock, usually five to seven years, and the sale at the end is the point. A TK Elevator mechanic who started in 2019 has watched the same employer sold in 2020 and agreed for sale again in 2026. IndustriALL's complaint is that nobody asked the workforce either time.

Vantage and Standard were built to keep the independent market supplied. They're now assets in portfolios that also hold contractors. That's legal and common in private equity. It's still worth knowing when a part is on backorder.

An inspector is worth something because nobody pays him to look the other way. A company that inspects, consults and sells the audit software is a different thing, whatever its intentions. Jurisdictions that employ their own inspectors, or licence QEIs one at a time, keep that separation by default.

What to watch

The European Commission filing, and what it asks KONE to sell. KONE's CFO has already said the company is prepared to divest assets.
Whether the DOJ second request ends in conditions, a lawsuit, or nothing. Schindler's challenge will be argued there.
Fujitec. EQT didn't buy it to hold it.
ATIS, which has bought four companies in two years.

On our sources

Every document this article links to is publicly hosted by the organization that owns it: company press releases on their own sites or newswires, union statements on the union's own site, and news reporting on the publisher's site. None was obtained through a leak, a confidential channel, or any URL we believe was supposed to be private. Where a figure is cited to our own OEM family tree, that page carries the primary source for it. The Kommersant article on Meteor Lift is in Russian; we read it in translation and would welcome a correction from anyone who reads the original.

The standard we apply: a link must point to a URL that the source organization either intentionally publishes or has chosen not to restrict. If you believe any document we've linked is improperly public, flag it in the discussion thread and we will review.

Related: the full ownership history of every major, back to the founders, is on the OEM Family Tree. The Richmond Elevator story covers a first contract at an independent that's still independent.