Private equity firm completes latest investment deal
Birmingham private equity firm, Beech Tree has completed its latest investment deal.
The company is investing funds in cloud data management business Redstor in support of its ongoing growth. The terms of the investment have not been disclosed.
Redstor, headquartered in Reading with operations in South Africa, will use the funds to accelerate product development, increase its sales and marketing activity and finance future acquisitions.
Colmore Row-based Beech Tree said it had been looking to invest in a company with exposure to the rapid growth in data generated by businesses.
It said industry forecasts indicated that the volume of data generated by corporates would double in the next three years. Furthermore, with regulatory changes on the horizon, particularly GDPR, corporates would need to be better able to manage and control the data they generate.
Paul Franks, managing partner of Beech Tree Private Equity, said: “There are a number of drivers for rapid growth in the data management and backup market right now, notably the proliferation of data across different devices and end points, the regulatory changes driving control of corporate data and the increased awareness of the threats posed by cyber attacks.
“Redstor is a leading business in this sector providing data management and backup to SMEs and enterprise customers.
“Our investment will be used to accelerate some of the exciting products in the pipeline, such as instant restoration of data and GDPR search and management and to provide firepower to undertake acquisitions to scale-up the business.”
Paul Evans, CEO of Redstor, said the injection of capital and expertise would enable the firm to move on to the next stage in its development.
“With Beech Tree’s assistance we will now accelerate our product capability and grow through acquisition. It’s the right time now to build the brand and capitalise on the significant investment made in the development of our cloud-enabled software and services.”
The deal was led for Beech Tree by Paul Franks, Adam Rudd and Ben Cartwright, with senior debt and acquisition facilities provided by Clydesdale Bank through Guy Stamp and Michael Tarr.
Advising Beech Tree on the deal were:
Corporate Finance – Grant Thornton (Andy Morgan, Anthony Platt, Helen Villiers)
Financial Due Diligence – Grant Thornton (John Stubbings)
Legal – Eversheds (Antony Walsh, Andrew Phillips, Chris Hastings)
Commercial and Technical Due Diligence – Cloud Origin (Richard Hall)
Tax – PwC (Stephen Woodhouse, Nick Hatton)
Banking Legal – Addleshaw Goddard (Alex Dunfey)
Advising Redstor were:
Corporate Finance – Oakley Advisory (James Chapman Andrews, Marc Jones, Oliver Temple)
Legal – Osborne Clarke (Greg Leyshon, Emma Barr, Louise Stuart-Buddery)
