Beech Tree Private Equity has invested in Transparity Solutions and is set to support the fast-growing Microsoft cloud specialist’s plans to scale up rapidly in a fragmented market.
Beech Tree and Newco were advised by Ed Brentnall, and Rob Parker of Dow Schofield Watts Transaction Services.
Headquartered near Bournemouth, Transparity supports UK large corporates and enterprises, providing advice, implementation services and training with regard to digital transformation projects and migration to Microsoft 365 and Azure services.
The business also provides ongoing support and maintenance to customers in relation to these business critical services. Plans are in place for investment to expand Transparity’s service offering.
Transparity currently employs 60 people and is on track to generate £13m revenue in the current financial year, up from £7.9m, with £21m forecast for next year.
Beech Tree has been looking to invest further in the sector due to the rapid growth in demand for the provision of cloud managed services across this area of the market and will support Transparity with its plans to scale up.
A new chief financial officer, Iain Slater, has been appointed as part of the deal. His prior sector knowledge and acquisition experience is set to help to support the current management team in executing its buy-and-build strategy.
Simon Hemley and Adam Rudd from Beech Tree Private Equity have also joined the board as non-executive directors.
“We have been seeking to invest in a Microsoft specialist cloud service provider targeting the large corporate and enterprise market for some time,” said Simon Hemley.
“The market is growing extremely quickly, and the business has referenced very strongly with a happy customer base and a strong relationship with Microsoft. We are excited to support the management team in pursuing a buy and build strategy – this is an area in which we have a lot of experience, having helped many of our other invested businesses to pursue similar strategies. We are delighted to invest in Transparity.”
David Jobbins, chief executive of Transparity, added: “We have built a strong relationship with the Beech Tree team over the past 18 months or so and their experience, connections and knowledge of the sector will help us scale to the next level.
“Importantly, this investment will enable us to continue to improve and expand our high-quality offering to our customer base. With Beech Tree’s assistance we will now accelerate our organic growth through further expansion of our cloud services proposition. With Beech Tree supporting us, we are now looking forward to embarking on our acquisition strategy in order to accelerate our growth even further.”
Dow Schofield Watts’ Midlands office has advised JPS Projects, a leading provider of specialist retrofit services with operations in Manchester, Chesterfield and Hemel Hempstead, on its private equity investment from Cordovan Capital Management.
