Oakley Capital Corporate Finance (‘OCCF’), the independent, pan-European corporate finance firm offering expert specialist advice across the TMT sector has advised ISIS Equity Partners (‘ISIS’) on its £45 million secondary buyout of Metronet (UK) from Lloyds Development Capital.
The OCCF team, led by James Chapman-Andrews and supported by Anthony Yaneza, provided full M&A advisory services to ISIS throughout the deal and ran a competitive leveraged debt process simultaneously.
Based in Manchester, Metronet (UK) is a business only Internet Services Provider that combines innovative wireless technology with traditional fibre to deliver connectivity solutions from leased lines to complex, multi-site networks across the UK. Founded in 2003, Metronet (UK) has grown very rapidly from its Manchester base into Lancashire, Cheshire, Liverpool, Leeds and Birmingham and continues to expand. The company has over 1,200 customers including Laing O’Rourke, Autotrader, Capgemini and Umbro.
ISIS is a mid-market private equity investor with offices in London, Birmingham and Manchester and had £1.3bn funds under management as at 31 March 2014.
ISIS’s support and investment will support Metronet (UK)’s rapid growth and expansion plan, enabling the company to ultimately create the UK’s first ubiquitous wireless network infrastructure.
The OCCF team has experienced a strong first half of 2014 and with this transaction has completed eight deals and retainers since January. Other deals include private market transactions of Sepura and e-know.net and the stock market listings of Just Eat and Manx Telecom.
James Chapman-Andrews, Director at OCCF, commented: “We are delighted to have advised ISIS on this deal which brings another high growth technology company with a first rate management team into their expanding TMT portfolio. We very much look forward to working with ISIS again in future. This transaction is a great demonstration of our ability at Oakley to provide valuable advice on both the equity and debt elements of a buy-side transaction concurrently.”
Matthew Caffrey at ISIS commented: “OCCF combined excellent industry knowledge alongside outstanding buy side support, including business planning, modelling, process management and a debt raise. James and Anthony genuinely became part of the ISIS team and helped us deliver within an 8 week timetable. An outstanding job all round.”
Since its establishment in late 2007, OCCF has completed over 50 transactions with a total enterprise value of over £5 billion. The business is increasingly international in focus; the majority of its 2013 transacted deal value involved overseas assets.