Lyceum Capital, the leading investor in B2B services and technology companies, is pleased to announce that it has acquired a majority stake in Timico Technology Group (Timico), a Managed Cloud Service Provider in a deal valued at over £50 million.

Operating in Newark, Winnersh and London, Timico was founded in 2004 by Tim Radford.  The business has a core client base of 500 mid-market and enterprise customers, revenues of £56 million and employs over 300 people. Over the past 12 years, the firm has grown substantially and has featured as one of the Sunday Times Tech Track Fastest Growing Companies.

Ben Marnham, CEO of Timico and Simon Hitchcock, Partner at Lyceum Capital

Lyceum is backing a strong management team led by Ben Marnham, who joined the business as CEO in September 2016.  CFO Harry Pepper is joined by new COO Clodagh Murphy and Chief Commercial Officer Simon Payne.  Tim Radford, will be reinvesting alongside Lyceum and remains on the board as a non-executive director.

Lyceum and Marnham have ambitious plans for the development of Timico.  The growth strategy focuses on investment in sales and marketing, developing a new go-to-market proposition and accelerating the company’s shift to become an end-to-end managed cloud service provider.  In addition, the firm’s organic growth plans will be accelerated through selective acquisitions.

Lyceum has substantial experience as an investor in the IT managed services sector, most recently through its successful investment in Adapt, which executed a similar transformational strategy and made two acquisitions during Lyceum’s ownership.  Prior to selling Adapt to US-based DataPipe in 2016, Lyceum supported the business in its evolution from a data centre reseller into a leading managed hosting provider delivering double digit organic growth.

Tim Radford, Founder of Timico, said: “In Lyceum we saw a team that truly understood our business as well as the sector dynamics and shared our view on future strategy.  Lyceum’s capabilities and track record as a value-adding technology investor gives us confidence that they are the right partner for the next phase of Timico’s growth.  With Lyceum’s support for acquisitions and the new management team, I am certain that Timico will become a market leader in managed cloud services.”

Ben Marnham, CEO of Timico commented: “We chose to work exclusively with Lyceum Capital due to their proven expertise in our sector and close cultural alignment with Timico.  I am delighted that their involvement means we can accelerate our programme of staff development and system improvements, and extend our reach into the managed service arena through selected acquisition activity over the course of the next few years.”

Simon Hitchcock, Partner at Lyceum, said: “Timico is Lyceum’s second £50m+ investment in the IT & Telecoms market in the past twelve months following our investment in Sabio in June 2016.  The fact that both deals were secured off-market is testimony to our deep sector knowledge and strong industry relationships.  We are delighted to be backing Ben and his team in their exciting plan to create the leading cloud service provider to UK corporates.  Given the scale and capabilities of Timico, we believe it is an excellent platform from which to execute a buy and build strategy that will significantly accelerate organic growth.”

The Lyceum Capital team was led by Simon Hitchcock who joins the board alongside Development Partner Geoff Neville and included MehulKantaria, Anne SofieStaunsbaek, Anne-Claire de Pompignan and Tom Maizels.