Daisy founder seals £210m takeover of telecoms rival

Lancashire’s Daisy Group has swooped for rival XLN Telecom in a deal understood to be worth around £210m, making it second only to BT Group in the UK’s SME telecoms market.

Nelson-based Daisy Group said the deal for XLN, which provides more than 100,000 small businesses with essential services including business broadband, phones and card payments, would complete early next month.

Daisy said its mission of keeping Britain working is supplemented by the addition of XLN and extends its product portfolio to offer the widest choice of solutions to the business market.

This division of Daisy now boasts in excess of 200,000 customers with combined revenues of more than £200m.

Chairman Matthew Riley said: “With so much investment across the UK to improve the fibre infrastructure, Daisy is now well-positioned to help unlock the enhanced speed, reliability and security that customers want in their offices and shops up and down the country. There is also a vast opportunity in the creation of jobs as we need more staff to help deliver that service.

“The analogue network switch off is fast approaching, meaning UK businesses are being pushed to explore digital services. Daisy are at the forefront in helping their customers understand the benefits and make the transition and will be employing more sales and service teams to continue this support.”

Dave McGinn, CEO of Daisy Communications, said: “I’ve always admired XLN and its philosophy of championing small businesses; it’s a great organisation and shares the same passion for customer service as demonstrated by their Trustpilot score. Daisy’s strategy has always been to acquire successful businesses and we’re delighted with the recent acquisition of XLN. We’re excited to work closely with the XLN team, to capitalise on our shared portfolio and to bring the best propositions and pricing to all of our customers. Ultimately, we want to keep enabling customers, collaboratively, to win in their marketplace.”

Christian Nellemann, founder and executive chairman of XLN, added: “We have been highly successful in our support of small businesses since our launch in 2002. We have continually innovated in both products and services which has enabled the company to continue to grow. Therefore, we felt the time was right to hand the reins over to Daisy, who have a great track record of investing and enhancing the businesses they acquire; the business and our customers are in safe hands.”