Inflexion puts ANS on the block with £400m price tag
Inflexion, the private equity owner of ANS is seeking to sell the server hosting and tech business for as much as £400m.
Inflexion and ANS management have never acknowledged the stain on the reputation of the business caused by its founder, the rapist Lawrence Jones, who is currently serving a long prison sentence.
The Manchester-based company rebranded from UK Fast to the name of its smaller subsidiary ANS as Jones awaited trial and after he had left the business following an internal inquiry into its culture.
Sky News has reported that Arma Partners have been deployed to sell ANS which made £24m in EBITDA on turnover of £129m according to its most recent filed accounts to the year ending December 2023.
Inflexion said they would not comment.
Businesses offering technology and communications infrastructure, and with recurring revenue from contracted business clients, are valued on a multiple of 21.64 times earnings according to the research business Equidam, justifying the initial £400m valuation, which appears to be at the low end.
Last year Arma sold Options Technology to Vitruvian, the acquisition of £1bn valued Focus Group by Hg Capital, but it was the sale of Mission Cloud Services to listed US acquiror, CDW which will bears the closest comparison to ANS.
Inflexion first took a 30% stake in Jones’ business in 2018 just as Jones’ reputation was fracturing. An investigation by journalists at the Financial Times gave confidence to women who came forward to report his crimes.
In June 2021 Inflexion then acquired ANS and in October 2021 the two businesses, ANS and UK Fast, merged and operated with a combined strategy and operational board from January 2022. ANS majority shareholder Scott Fletcher exited the business.
At the time it was said “a new brand for the combined business [is] being announced in due course.”
The UK Fast brand and name was comprehensively ditched, despite it being the largest of the two merged businesses.
Under Inflexion’s guidance, the board commissioned a report into the culture of the business which has never been made public.
No mention of its toxic legacy has ever been acknowledged, nor has any formal apology been given.
At the sentencing hearing on 1 December 2023 HHJ Sarah Johnston, before passing a 15 year jail term, said that the successful technology tycoon presided over a culture that silenced and intimidated women who worked there.
“You created a workplace which was tainted by your attitude towards women,” she said.
In December, the honours committee finally got around to stripping Jones of his MBE, which had been awarded for services to the digital economy in 2015. Manchester Metropolitan University withdrew his honorary doctorate within days of his conviction.
