Debt buyer and collection agency ACM Group is getting out of the collections business, agreeing to sell its entire purchase debt ledger and other assets to Collection House.The deal is worth A$40.3 million and the transaction should be settled by the end of March. ACM's expected future recoveries have been valued to $75 million. Collection House said in a statement that it expected ACM to contribute $5.5 million of EBIT in 2019/20.The acquisition will be funded from existing cash reserves and a $50 million facility extension from Collection House's bankers.Collection House will offer employment contracts to selected Sydney-based employees of ACM. It said ACM had expertise in the telecommunications market, which would diversify its activities."With over $400 million in face value there are significant opportunities to outperform our base case projection once we have had time to assess the less active parts of the book," said Collection House chief executive Anthony Rivas.ACM has had its share of run-ins with regulators in recent years. In a ruling in December, the Federal Court found that the company engaged in undue harassment and coercion, and misleading and deceptive conduct in its dealings with two customers in the course of its business of debt collecting.ACM was fined $750,000 and ordered to pay costs to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which brought the case. It was also ordered to establish a compliance program and revise its internal operations. In its dealings with one customer, ACM said it intended to commence legal proceedings shortly if a debt was not repaid within 48 hours, when it had no intention of commencing legal proceedings.In its dealings with another consumer, ACM said it had commenced preparing the documents that would be used for potential legal action against the debtor, when it had not actually done so. It told the same consumer that it was planning to have a summons issued, when it was not planning to do so.On another occasion it said that if a default was listed on a consumer's credit file, the consumer would not be able to obtain credit for the next five to seven years, even though ACM did not have reasonable grounds for saying this.The court ruled that all these representations were misleading and deceptive.In an earlier case, ACM was found to have made repeated calls to a care facility where a consumer with a serious medical condition was living, even though it knew the consumer could not repay the debt. The court found that the company's behaviour constituted undue harassment.  ACM made over 40 calls to the care facility over a lengthy period. The court found that the consumer was "in a position of special disadvantage" and that ACM's actions were "reprehensible and unreasonable".The ACM deal is the second acquisition Collection House has made this year. In January, it announced a move into the New Zealand market with the acquisition of Receivables Management (NZ) Ltd.Collection House paid $13.4 million for the company, which has around NZ$22 million of expected future recoveries over