Print.IT Reseller - issue 88

PRINTITRESELLER.UK 39 M&A M&A activity in the technology, media and telecommunications (TMT) space has prospered throughout the pandemic, and investor appetite is high. Here, Nigel Cook, Founder and Managing Director of Evolution Capital, a mid-market corporate finance boutique specialising in the TMT sector, talks about the current climate and e-Accelerator – the UK’s first ICT mergers and acquisitions marketplace portal Accelerating value remote collaboration. “Corporate finance is a traditional field and we’ve all built processes that are based around face to face interaction. For the last 18 months we have had to do much of our work remotely and that creates challenges when you have to share information across multiple businesses and dozens of people and need to create that human element, which is still such an important factor when deciding whether or not to invest in or buy a business,” Cook said. Matchmaking, information-sharing and benchmarking Evolution Capital has built a new software platform, e-Accelerator, which provides a framework for matchmaking, information-sharing and benchmarking, where business owners can interact remotely with the Evolution Capital team and potential buyers/investors can understand more about businesses and their management teams. As its name suggests, e-Accelerator is a new tool designed to automate and speed up the sharing of confidential information in a world that increasingly relies on remote, rather than face to face, interactions. The cloud platform enables business owners to interact remotely and securely with a network of potential buyers and the Evolution Capital team who can help them develop transaction-ready deal propositions. Investors and business buyers can use e-Accelerator’s company finder to search for, filter and find companies that might be of interest to them and to show their interest in finding out more about individual companies by clicking a button to alert the Evolution Capital team. The platform, which requires users to sign NDA agreements at different levels, provides three services to authorised users, who are given different levels of access depending on their status. n Matchmaking . Business owners can connect to Evolution Capital’s accredited and qualified contacts, giving them quicker access to a greater number of potential buyers or investors. n Process management . e-Accelerator supports the transaction process from the initial business engagement stage through to deal completion, resulting in faster decision-making, greater transparency and more control over the process for all parties. n Benchmarking . Buyers and investors will be able to identify high performing businesses at a glance thanks to a benchmarking score showing whether a business is in the top, middle or bottom tier of their sector. M&A activity running hot The launch of e-Accelerator comes at a good time for Evolution Capital, as M&A activity in the TMT sector is running very hot. The company is well placed to profit from this activity as its rationale is to ‘build value’ and, as such, its services are in demand both from business owners and from a handful of buyers looking for investment opportunities, often as part of a ‘buy and build’ strategy. That the company specialises in the “When the pandemic struck back in March last year, things went very quiet, and for three or four months there was very little activity, but by the autumn, most of the tech- based private equity (PE) firms were back in the market and looking for acquisitions. By the time we got to Christmas, there was a lot of competition for the best businesses, and since the New Year we have seen investors and PE firms moving funds from other areas in which they have invested into our space, because it is seen as a safe haven and a good place to make money,” Cook explained. The pandemic has also caused business owners to reassess their options. “When you have an event like the pandemic, it does bring forward decisions for entrepreneurs who are looking to retire, but it also creates opportunities for others who are looking to grow because, whilst there have been limitations on organic growth because of restrictions on business activities, there has been another way forward, which is through growing your business and enhancing its value through M&A. More and more entrepreneurs are seeing that as a route forward,” he added. New ways to conduct business Like many of the companies it advises, Evolution Capital has had to change the way it conducts business over the last 18 months, replacing face to face meetings and processes honed over the last 20 years with video communications and continued... Nigel Cook