New managed services group makes first acquisition in buy-build strategy

A new IT and managed services group has been formed with backing Independence Capital and struck a deal for a Llandudno-based cloud-service provider as the first deal in a planned buy-and-build growth strategy.

Independence Capital has teamed up with Alex Heslip and Chris Earle, formerly group sales director and chief executive, respectively, at Verastar. Verastar was an aggregated business service provider serving the SME market.

Under Heslip and Earle’s management, Verastar scaled up from £16 million in EBITDA to £40 million in less than ten years, prior to exiting the business through a secondary buy-out led from Vitruvian, which valued the company at more £430 million.

The new group will seek to utilise this experience, with Heslip now taking on the role of CEO and Earle acting as non-executive chairman. The group is backed by hybrid investor-advisor Independence Capital, which specialises in buy-and-build strategies.

The group’s first deal has seen it acquire Risc IT Solutions, a Llandudno-based cloud service provider specialising in Microsoft services. Risc has a long history in Microsoft Office 365, Azure cloud migrations and backup/restore and, more recently, has added a full Managed Service Provider (MSP) offering, serving clients in the 25-100 user market.

Heslip said that the acquisition of Risc would be the “bedrock” from which the new group would grow going forward. Heslip added that original founder Paul Roberts and co-owner Joanna Stewart would exit the company as part of the deal but remain as part of the group’s founding shareholders.

Risc’s managing director Jeremy Keane, who will continue in his role whilst also becoming part of the group’s founding shareholders, said that the company had “repeatedly been approached by both potential trade and private equity acquirers.” However, Keane added, none of these potential acquirers had “presented a transaction structured in the way we have now agreed” and that the deal “ensures the protection of continuity for both employees and customers alike”.

Independence Capital managing director Max Ward said that the new group “affords best-in-class management a structure which enables autonomy and incentivises with maximum reward”, adding that the group has “a full M&A pipeline already built” and that more information would be shared regarding additional deals soon.


Read about recent M&A trends in the UK's telecoms sector.

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