Palatine in Selection Services bolt-on

Barclays provided additional working capital facilities for the acquisition. The sale process wasrun by James Cooper - Palatine was however already familiar with 8el since the company was an existing supplier to Selection Services. Negotiations took several months from start to closing.

Selection had to outsource many of the services prior to the acquisition, whereas the company can now control cloud services in-house, Palatine told unquote".

The bolt-on will increase Selection's service capabilities, adding networking, connectivity, voice and hosted telephony to the service portfolio. Several other acquisitions are planned this year.

Previous funding
Palatine originally backed the management buyout of Selection, along with the acquisition of hosting and disaster recovery business Cloud Data, in December 2011. Palatine acquired a majority stake in Selection and the MBO was thought to be worth between £5-15m.

The capital injection represented Palatine's ninth investment from its £100m maiden fund since its closing in 2007. The combination of Selection and Cloud Data created a business with 360 employees and revenues of £28m.

Company
Bromley-based Selection Services, founded in 1992, provides managed IT services to the SME market. The combination of Bromley-based Selection and 8el will create a business with nearly 400 employees and revenues of £37m.

8el, based in Reading, was founded in 2001 by managing director Justin Hamilton-Martin. He will join the group's operating board of directors as head of Selection's networking service line.

People
Tony Dickin is a partner at Palatine. Grahame Harrington is managing director of Selection.

Advisers
Company – Grant Thornton (Corporate finance); Tenon (Financial due diligence); CIL (Commercial due diligence); Gateleys (Legal).

• Tweet  
• Facebook  
• LinkedIn  
• Google plus  
• Send to  

• Topics
• UK / Ireland
• Technology
• Expansion
• Now researching
• United Kingdom
• Palatine Private Equity
• Acquisition finance