New owner for 1,000 strong marketing tech firm as it targets US growth
Birmingham marketing tech firm Inspired Thinking Group (Team ITG) has been sold to investment firm Bridgpoint.
The deal will see Bridgeport fund the 1,000-strong firm’s grpwth in the US, based around its cloud-based marketing technology and marketing services. It also provides an exit for Equistone.
Founded in 2009, Team ITG can count GSK, Jaguar Land Rover, Heineken, PUMA and Currys among its customers.
Simon Ward, CEO of Team ITG, said: “Our success has been built on revolutionising the way marketers work, liberating them from tedious administrative tasks through our integrated ecosystem of game-changing technology and world-class creative services. Designed by marketers for marketers, our martech platform is highly innovative, refreshingly intuitive, and extremely powerful. GSK, one of our many global clients, recently described our CanopyCloud platform as ‘the future and heart of their content operations’.
“We would like to thank Equistone for its fantastic support in developing our business over the past four years. And now, our relationship with Bridgepoint is another brilliant milestone in our journey as we grow globally. We have the team and the resources to deliver even more powerful results for our clients across the world while also developing a host of exciting new partnerships.”
Emma Watford, partner and co-head of Bridgepoint’s investment activities in the UK, said: “Team ITG is a successful marketing operations services business with a compelling software offering, CanopyCloud. It operates in a very large, growing and fragmented market that benefits from the increasing need for automation driven by the shift to digital and personalised marketing. We’re excited to be backing the team at a crucial time as they scale their technology offering and become increasingly global – areas where we can provide the necessary expertise to accompany them on this next stage in their journey.”
Whilst Equistone has sold its majority stake, the firm has reinvested in Team ITG through its dedicated Reinvestment Fund. This reflects Equistone’s ongoing support and confidence in the executive team, the driving force behind the next stage of Team ITG’s growth.
Paul Harper, partner at Equistone, said: “We are proud to have partnered with Simon and the team during this exceptional phase of the company’s development, comprising strong organic and acquisitive growth. We are also delighted to be reinvesting in Team ITG as a minority shareholder and look forward to continuing to support the business’s ambitious global growth strategy.”
Bridgepoint was advised on the deal by Alantra, JEGI Clarity, Allen & Overy, EY and Bain & Company. Team ITG and Equistone were advised by GP Bullhound and Eversheds Sutherland.
