Aurelius carves out BT Fleet Solutions

Kenny Wastell
05 August 2019

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Aurelius Equity Opportunities has agreed to acquire the fleet management division of UK telecommunications group BT.

Financial details of the transaction remain undisclosed, though Aurelius writes equity cheques of €5–80m per deal.

BT's fleet management division generated a turnover of £209.5m in its most recent financial year, according to publicly available documents.

The deal includes an agreement for the newly independent business to continue managing the existing fleets of both BT and its former subsidiary Openreach. The company will rebrand from BT Fleet Solutions within the next year, according to a statement.

The business will invest in operational improvement under its new owners, in addition to focusing on specific business areas including heavy goods vehicles, accident management and vehicle funding. It will also pursue potential bolt-on acquisitions.

Special situations investor Aurelius said in a statement that it has seen a number of "compelling opportunities" in the UK owing to "the ongoing economic and political uncertainty that has arisen out of Brexit".

The transaction is scheduled to complete by the end of 2019.

Company
Founded in 2002 and headquartered in Solihull, BT Fleet Solutions is a commercial fleet management business. It operates a network of 65 garages in addition to 500 third party facilities and manages around 80,000 vehicles across the UK. The business has a headcount of 950 including around 50 mobile technicians.

People
Aurelius Equity Opportunities – Dirk Markus (CEO, chairperson).
BT Enterprise – Gerry McQuade (CEO).

Advisers
Equity – Deloitte (M&A); Mayer Brown (legal); KPMG (tax).
Vendor – Lazard (M&A); Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner (legal).