Palatine Private Equity has sold IT services business Selection for £34.8m to AIM listed Castle Street Investment (CSI).
Selection provides fully outsourced IT solutions to over 500 organisations across the public and private sector. Clients include David Lloyd Leisure, Day Lewis Pharmacy, KPMG, Nuffield Health and Bibby Financial Services.
Palatine backed a £15m management buyout of the business in December 2011.
The management team, led by Managing Director Grahame Harrington, Chairman Alan Howarth and Finance Director Mark Woodall, have transformed Selection from a traditional break/fix maintenance IT support business to a fully outsourced IT managed service provider with revenues of £40m.
They also made two strategic acquisitions during the four-year investment period with the purchase of hosting and disaster recovery services business Cloud Data in 2011, before acquiring Aggregated Telecom (8tel) in 2013. This added networking, connectivity, voice and hosted telephony to the portfolio of services. Most recently Selection achieved G-Cloud 7 supplier status which is set to increase business opportunities in the public sector.
Castle Street Investments plc (CSI) is an AIM listed cash shell and is planning to use Selection Services as a platform for further acquisitions.