Member Article

Grant Thornton leads deal for high-growth cloud hosting business

Grant Thornton’s North West Corporate Finance team has completed its first TMT deal of 2019, advising the shareholders of Hosted Desktop UK (HDUK) on their investment from specialist SME lender Beechbrook Capital. The transaction was Beechbrook Capital’s maiden deal from its latest UK SME credit fund.

The team, comprising Partner and Head of Corporate Finance Peter Terry, Manager Daniel Brecker and Assistant Manager Cariad Mudford, advised on the shareholder realignment at Exeter-based hosted services firm HDUK.

The flexible funding was provided by Beechbrook’s UK SME Credit II fund, which supports small and medium-sized businesses in the UK with EBITDA of £1m and above. The funding enables HDUK to continue on its growth trajectory, through both organic growth and growth by acquisition.

The HDUK deal is the third key deal in the TMT sector that the GT North team has advised on in the last 18 months and follows on from the £16.5m sale of Salford-based Sonassi to Iomart in December 2017 and NorthEdge Capital’s investment in Yorkshire company iPortalis in August 2018.

Peter Terry said: “As our domestic and working lives become ever-more technology dependent, it’s no surprise that there continues to be strong investor interest in any asset in the cloud computing, data infrastructure and connectivity space”.

“HDUK is a highly profitable business with particular experience of supporting customers in the accountancy and finance sector. It has a great reputation for providing a high-quality service and benefits from high customer loyalty – which gives the business a great platform for further growth.”

“We were pleased to work with Beechbrook Capital on the first deal in its new fund. It shows that despite the well-documented uncertainties in the economy there are still good funding options for dynamic SMEs and their management teams.”

Beechbrook, which like Grant Thornton has its Manchester office in Spinningfields, invests in SMEs across a range of industries in the UK and across Europe. To date, it has raised more than £650m through five funds, and has invested in 60 companies. The Beechbrook team consists of 20 plus investment professionals located in London, Manchester, Cork, Dublin and Frankfurt.

Manchester law firms Pannone Corporate (sell side advice, led by Mark Winthorpe) and DWF LLP (buy side advice, led by Jonathan Robinson) also advised on the deal.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ellie Watson .