Marshall Motor Group has agreed a deal to acquire Francis Group, a four site business based in Leicestershire, for an undisclosed sum as part of its plans to grow across the UK.

As part of the deal, all of the Francis Group employees at these sites (around 85 in total) would transfer to Marshall.

All staff at the four dealerships are currently being consulted and the completion date is expected to be February 24.

Francis Group was privately owned and has been run by Robin Francis for 17 years. It was bought by Marshall for an undisclosed price.

With this acquisition, Marshall adds two more Honda businesses to its portfolio bringing the total number of sites to six Honda car and one Honda bike franchise, building on the acquisition a year ago of the De Vries businesses in Yorkshire.

The new sites between them cover the whole of Leicestershire, including Leicester, the 10th largest city in the UK.

The group also adds a new Seat business in Leicester, further building on the Marshall Group’s close relationship with Seat and with the Volkswagen Group. Marshall also gains its first Suzuki business with this acquisition.

This latest acquisition follows on from Marshall opening a new Volvo dealership in Nottingham, which was announced last week.

Daksh Gupta, Marshall chief executive, said: “This is a great acquisition for Marshall and we look forward to welcoming and working with our new colleagues from the Francis Group.

“The Francis Group is an excellent business and we share many core values. Our goal is to have all of our businesses in the upper quartile of our respective manufacturers’ CSi leagues and eight of our branches hit No.1 during 2009 for their brand partners.”

Gupta said he was excited about partnering with Suzuki for the first time as “its product line-up was particularly well placed for the current market climate”.

He added: “We have added 12 businesses to Marshall in the last 12 months and these four will add another £35m to our annual turnover.

“The deal meets all of our strategic acquisition criteria; the businesses have great people and the markets are scalable, offering tremendous potential for the future and this also continues our plan to broaden our horizons beyond our historic East Anglian boundaries.”