Beech Tree Private Equity backed BCN Group raises a significant acquisition facility to support its buy-and-build strategy and appoints David Goldie as Chairman BCN Group, a fast-growing provider of IT managed services to UK businesses today announces that it has raised a significant acquisition debt facility to support its buy and build strategy. The company has also appointed David Goldie as the Chairman of the Company. David has been involved in a number of businesses across the unified communications and cloud services space and brings a wealth of experience in executing successful buy and build strategies.

The new acquisition facility provided by NatWest and led by Mike Malone (Director Structured Finance) and Emily Smithies (Senior Manager, TMT) will give BCN the firepower to supplement its organic growth with several strategic bolt-on acquisitions to increase both the scale and the breadth of the Group’s service offering.

CEO Simon Kelf commented: “We all welcome David to the board, his experience around executing buy and build strategies will be a great help as we deliver our strategy. We are looking at several potential acquisition opportunities already which will enable us to provide an even broader portfolio of products and solutions to our clients and an increased level of opportunity for our staff. This committed facility will support our strategy and enable us to move faster when assessing strategic acquisition opportunities. I look forward to hopefully announcing our first deal in the not too distant future”.

David Goldie, Chairman of BCN Group commented: “I am delighted to have joined the Board of BCN, the team have created a very successful IT managed service business with a real focus on customer service. I am looking forward to working with the team and Beech Tree Private Equity to pursue the buy and build strategy”.

Richard Smart, Managing Director, Head of Regional Structured Finance, NatWest commented: “This is another great example of our ability and desire to support high growth, high potential SME’s achieve their strategic growth ambitions, we very much look forward to working alongside BCN to help them deliver on their exciting future plans”.

BCN and Beech Tree Private Equity were advised by debt specialists Clearwater International and DLA Piper. Natwest were advised by Addleshaw Goddard.

About BCN
BCN Group, headquartered Manchester, provides a full range of IT managed services to support UK businesses. BCN provides on-premise, hybrid and cloud hosting solutions, cloud migration services, application support, voice solutions, data management, hardware sales and maintenance services to hundreds of customers across the country.

About Beech Tree Private Equity
Beech Tree Private Equity is a mid-market private equity specialist operating in high-growth sectors of the UK economy. We invest between £10m and £40m into UK headquartered businesses providing funding for Management Buy Outs, Secondary Capital (to provide partial cash out for founder shareholders) along with Primary Capital (to accelerate growth organically or through acquisition following “buy and build” strategies).

Notes to the Editor:
The key people and advisers to the transaction are as follows:

Beech Tree Private Equity: Andy Marsh, Adam Rudd, Ben Cartwright
BCN Debt Advisors: Clearwater International (Joe Dyke, Mark Ward)
BCN Legal Advisors: DLA LLP (Matthew Christmas, Alexander Yeramian, Holly Daley)
NatWest: Mike Malone, Amy Wright, Rachael Cloke, Emily Smithies
NatWest Legal Advisors: Addleshaw Goddard LLP (Richard Oman, Caroline Gray, Emma Whitehall)