ISIS link-up a "marriage made in heaven" – Onyx chief
Onyx Group hopes to establish a presence in every "major metropolitan area" in the UK with an acquisition drive backed by ISIS Equity Partners. Chief executive Neil Stephenson told Insider the partnership with ISIS, which has large operations in Birmingham, was a "marriage made in heaven".
Led by Mark Advani, ISIS backed a £27m management buyout of the North East-headquartered IT support services business in October last year (2011), setting aside £15m of cash to fund strategic acquisitions with the aim of enhancing Onyx's geographical footprint.
"We're looking to be in all the major metropolitan areas and to be close to our customers," said Stephenson.
"We're looking to build out our model in all the major areas and where we are not in a geography it would make sense for us to acquire to get in there and then there is organic growth on top of that. And I wouldn't rule out going to a geography that we are already in and acquiring just to get more market share."
Onyx has ten sites across the UK including London, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Teesside and Sheffield. This includes five data centres and six workplace recovery facilities. According to Stephenson, the UK is ripe with opportunity, something which prompted the company to look for investment.
"We were attracted to the deal by two things," he said.
"We saw market opportunity, first of all. We're in a growth market where consolidation is an opportunity.
"This is a buy and build business and we have made acquisitions in the past, including two bits of infrastructure last year. So this is a business that is acquisitive and it required an additional war chest to allow it to continue.
"The management team had identified massive market opportunity and required the firepower to move to the next level.
"That was the rationale for doing it, the rationale for choosing ISIS was that, in our view, the people were the best people we met – we really liked them, got on well and thought we could work with them.
"Their deal with committed funding and their ambition matched up with us. I liked the guys and thought they could add value to what we were doing. It was like a marriage made in heaven."
