Venture capital investor Alchemy Partners has sold its stake in Environmental Property Services (EPS), a maintenance company.

Venture capital investor Alchemy Partners has sold its stake in Environmental Property Services (EPS), a maintenance company operating in the South East of England.

EPS has been sold in its entirety to listed facilities management business Mitie Group for up to £38.5 million, allowing an exit for venture capital investor Alchemy Partners as well as EPS’s management team. Of the total, £35 million has been paid in cash on completion and the rest is dependent on the acquired business’s future earnings.

David Brooks, corporate finance partner at Grant Thornton which advised the vendors on the deal, says the acquisition will give Mitie ‘a strong hub in the south east [of England] social housing market’, enabling it to target ‘public sector clients who are looking at “bundled” services to reduce procurement costs’.

The acquisition increases Mitie’s social housing business to more than £200 million in annualised revenues.

Alchemy invested in the management buy-out of EPS in 1999, but its stake was reduced to 19 per cent following a refinancing in 2003 which left EPS’s bank HBOS with 43 per cent of the business and the management team with 38 per cent.