Birmingham firm advises on major technology acquisition

One of the UK’s fastest growing internet infrastructure providers has undergone further expansion in a deal part advised out of Birmingham.

Metronet (UK), backed by mid-market private equity firm Livingbridge, has acquired Venus Business Communications, a leading high growth fibre network provider.

David Neate, partner at Birmingham-based Springboard Corporate Finance advised Metronet on the deal.

The acquisition of Venus follows Metronet’s £47.5m purchase of internet infrastructure and hosting company M247 in October last year.

Venus will provide the group with access to the strategically important London market as it seeks to build a national disruptive platform with ‘last mile’ control, faster connectivity and communications to end users and a powerful transit network across Europe.

Venus will add six new strategically important datacentres to the group’s network so that, following the acquisition, Metronet (UK)’s network is now connected to all key strategic UK data centre locations as well as 14 of the world’s largest and most important Internet Exchanges.

The combined group will employ around 230 people across six sites including Manchester, Newcastle, London and Bucharest. It will support almost 34,000 customers across 92 countries, from SMEs to Enterprise clients including Intu, On The Beach, Sofology and ao.com, and deliver revenues of nearly £50m.

Metronet UK, which is backed by mid-market private equity firm Livingbridge, is the UK’s fastest growing connectivity and internet infrastructure provider, delivering industry-leading performance and support.

Mr Neate said: “London is clearly the strategic market for connectivity and internet infrastructure businesses in the UK. The acquisition of Venus will provide an excellent platform from which Metronet can continue its impressive growth trajectory. We are delighted to have supported Metronet and Livingbridge on this transaction.”

Lee Perkins, CEO, Metronet, said: “Venus is a fantastic business which has established itself as a leading player in the London market thanks to its market leading levels of speed and reliability. Just as importantly, Venus has the same entrepreneurial and customer-centric culture as us so I have no doubt that it will be an excellent fit with our business.”

He added: “Having used Springboard on a previous process, we had no hesitation in appointing (them) for this transaction.”

Livingbridge first invested in Metronet (UK) in June 2014 as part of a £45m secondary buyout of the firm. Follow on funding to support the group’s acquisition strategy and the investment in Venus has been made by the Livingbridge 5 fund.

Matthew Caffrey, partner at Livingbridge, said: “The acquisition of Venus neatly complements Metronet’s existing capabilities and will enable the business to build a world class wireless network in London on top of Venus’ core transit and last mile fibre capability.”