Daisy completes acquisition of Phoenix IT

Daisy Group has completed its acquisition of troubled managed services provider Phoenix IT.

The £135m deal, which was initially proposed back in May, will see 3,600 businesses added to Daisy’s existing customer base and propels the unified comms and – now - managed infrastructure provider ever closer to its target of becoming a £1bn business.

Trading of Phoenix shares on the London Stock Exchange was suspended as of 8am today.

The ‘headcount reduction’ that was hinted at back in May also looks to be going ahead, with Phoenix’s chief executive Steve Vaughan stepping down.

In fiscal 2015, Phoenix saw a turnover of £212.4m. The last complete revenue picture for Daisy was 2013/2014, which saw sales of £352.7m; but it has since gobbled up Damovo, which saw sales 27.5m. All in all, Daisy’s appetite for M&A puts it somewhere in the region of a £600m company. 

“The worlds of Unified Communications and IT Services are rapidly converging and our customers and partners are asking us to provide a broader range of services under one roof,” said Matthew Riley, Daisy Group founder and executive chairman.

“As such, our ambition is to be the leading provider of unified business communications and IT infrastructure managed services and solutions via our SMB, Corporate and Partner Services businesses in the UK - a marketplace we believe to be worth over £10billion per annum.

Neil Muller, Daisy Group CEO commented: “By combining capabilities, we are well positioned to offer true differentiation to our mid-market customers, providing them with a breadth of solutions and expertise, ensuring their critical systems are ‘always on’.”

“Over the coming weeks and months we will be combining the core strengths of both businesses, and we believe that the enlarged Group will become the ‘go to’ provider for end-to-end Unified Communications and IT Infrastructure Managed Services and solutions.”