YFM Equity Partners, the specialist private equity fund manager, has made an investment into 4net Technologies Ltd to support the continued growth of the business through new product and market development. YFM's investment is the fourth investment from its YFMEP 2016 Fund.
4net develops and provides contact centre and telephony solutions to UK enterprises and central and local government. It is one of a small number of Avaya top-level Diamond partners in the UK and has a range of other accreditations, and is the provider of the “Antenna” platform to a number of central government departments.
The business was founded in 2005 by Richard Pennington, Frank Jennings, Michael Jervis, and Steve Tyrrell. The team has grown the business extensively and will now be joined by industry veteran Iain McKenzie who will become non-executive chairman.
Nigel Owens, Investment Director at YFM, said:
"4net has established an impressive reputation in providing innovative solutions to its corporate and government customer base, which has fuelled impressive growth. We look forward to working with the team in the next stage of its development.
“This is the fourth investment from YFM’s 2016 Fund, which closed in April 2017 and represents another good example of investing in well-established regional businesses from the YFM network, in the £2-7 million investment market.”
Richard Pennington, MD at 4net, added:
"We are a telecommunications business that puts the customer at the heart of what we do. We are looking forward to working with Iain McKenzie and YFM to continue to provide award winning support and managed services for our customers and their mission critical infrastructures, and to help them adopt the right technologies to help them transform their communications and customer experience”
TMT specialist Knight Corporate Finance advised 4net on their investment from YFM. Paul Billingham, Director at Knight Corporate Finance, said:
“Having seen lots of private equity investment in the ICT sector, and with a number of new opportunities being developed by the business, the team at 4net were keen to understand how private equity could help accelerate their growth over the next few years. After introducing the team to YFM it was clear that they were the right partner to work with as the business aims to double profits over the next few years”.
4net was advised by Paul Billingham, Sam Davies and Tom Jones of Knight Corporate Finance and Paul Rimmer of DWF LLP. Legal advice to YFM was provided by Karen Procter of Shoosmiths (Manchester) and James Foster of Shoosmiths (Leeds), financial due diligence was carried out by Dow Schofield Watts led by Ed Brentnall, commercial due diligence by Philip Carse at Megabuyte, IT due diligence by Turous and management referencing by Anna Cornwallis at Stratton HR.
