- Merger backed by recently formed private equity fund, Apiary Capital
- Creates one of the UK’s largest Customer Experience and Unified Communications specialists
- Combined group has annual revenues in excess of £55 million
3 July 2019 – Connect Managed Services (“Connect”), and competitor G3 Comms (“G3”) today announce the merger of the two businesses, creating a market-leading Customer Experience (CX) and Unified Communications (UC) managed services provider, generating annual revenues in excess of £55 million. The combined group will be one of the largest firms of its kind in the UK, and is backed by Apiary Capital, who acquired a majority stake in G3 in March 2019.
Connect supports global enterprise customers such as Johnson & Johnson, BP and Diageo in the deployment and management of their CX and UC environments. The company has achieved strong growth since the LDC-backed MBO in 2014, culminating in turnover in the year to December 2018 of £30m. This transaction marks a successful exit for LDC.
G3 Comms is an established business communications and network integrator, supporting multi-site UK enterprises, often with international operations. G3’s global reach is supported by its international network providing resilient voice and data services around the world. Turnover for the year to April 2019 was in excess of £20 million and its roster of high-profile clients include Volkswagen and Morningstar.
Connect’s Alex Tupman and Martin Cross, will lead the group as CEO and CTO respectively, together with G3’s James Arnold-Roberts and Adam Young, who will become group Managing Director and COO respectively. The board will be supplemented with the appointments of industry veterans Mark Thompson as Chairman, and G3 co-founder, Tony Parish, as non-executive director.
Group CEO, Alex Tupman, said, “Our objective is to create a highly scalable and focussed business that can support the needs of a far greater and more diverse customer base, located within both the UK and abroad. The merger of G3 and Connect brings together two businesses with highly complementary capabilities which will enable our combined clients to derive significant benefits from the newly acquired skills provided by the enlarged team, together with the ability to offer an extended portfolio of specialist and proven products and services.
James Arnold-Roberts, CEO of G3 commented, “We are really excited to be joining forces with Connect. The combination of the two businesses will bring even greater benefit to our existing customers while our emerging scale will allow us to reach new prospects both here in the UK and around the world. When we looked at Connect’s capabilities alongside our own – including our dedicated global network infrastructure – it was clear that this was the perfect fit.”
Nicki Boyd, Apiary Capital partner, commented, “We are delighted to be supporting the compelling merger of Connect and G3. Alex and James have a shared vision of building a platform of significant scale in the market they both serve so well. We believe this is just the start of an exciting and highly productive collaboration and it is fantastic to be working with experienced and likeminded people who are totally aligned with our goals and objectives.”
About Connect Managed Services
Connect Managed Services is the world’s leading Customer Experience (CX) and Unified Communications (UC) managed services provider for global businesses and supports a diverse range of blue-chip organisations across the globe. Connect draws on over 25 years of knowledge and experience to enable digital transformation of CX and UC environments to deliver an exceptional customer experience and improved efficiencies and businesses performance. The firm has uniquely established a vendor-agnostic strategy by partnering with Genesys, Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Avaya and Cisco, enabling it to offer best of breed solutions that deliver optimal outcomes.
About G3 Comms
G3 Comms is a specialist integrator and expert advisor with over 30 years’ experience and an award-winning team of engineers. G3 Comms builds and deploys Unified Communications and Contact Centres for enterprises across many sectors to facilitate new ways of working. Partnering with 25 leading communications suppliers – including Microsoft, Genesys and Avaya – G3 Comms runs an aggregated Tier 1 global network to deliver unrivalled reach and quality of service around the world.
About Apiary Capital
Apiary Capital is a UK private equity firm investing in the business and technology services sectors. The firm seeks to back platform companies in attractive market segments and supports management teams to accelerate growth through strategic acquisitions and investment. Apiary Capital closed its maiden fund at £200m in June 2018.