BT Engage IT chief executive Martin Balaam is stepping down as part of a re-organisation that will see the telco-owned reseller merge with BT’s Business Direct and dab.com.
Round-up of today’s M&A deals
BT Engage IT chief executive Martin Balaam is stepping down as part of a re-organisation that will see the telco-owned reseller merge with BT’s Business Direct and dab.com operations aiming to create a £1 billion reseller and IT services giant.
The Engage IT board is now reporting to John Thornhill, who is heading up the new £400 million business unit, and will perform a handover with current managing director Martin Balaam over the coming weeks. Thornhill previously led Dabs and BT Business Direct.
Thornhill says: ‘We have aspirations to build an IT services business that is close to £1 billion over the next few years. We took the view that to play at that scale we needed to bring together the component parts and maximise their capabilities under one unified organisation.’
Thornhill adds that the Engage IT, Business Direct and Dabs brands will remain in place for ‘six to nine months’, but the enlarged organisation will ‘in time need to look at rebranding’. This process will be shaped by customer feedback, he explained.
Engage IT, which was formed in 2009 through the merger of resellers Lynx and Basilica, specialises in selling IT services to businesses with 500 staff or more and has a turnover of £200 million. BT Business Direct, which turned over £120 million last year, focuses on firms with 75-500 seats.
The three firms have a combined projected turnover for the year to 31 March 2012 of £400 million, according to BT.
‘There is an opportunity to aggregate more of our spend with key distribution partners and work more closely across a broad range of markets with Microsoft, HP and other vendors,’ adds Thornhill.
‘We can also use the different capabilities of each organisation to better effect. For instance, Business Direct has a fast-growing network sales capability that we can expand into Engage IT customers. Similarly, Engage IT has a managed desktop and break-fix capability which is potentially very valuable to Business Direct.’
- Solera Holdings, a provider of software and services to the automobile insurance claims processing industry, has purchased See Progress, a US-based provider of vehicle repair status software application
Value: undisclosed
Advisers: undisclosed
- WPP acquisition drive continues the purchase of consultancy group Global Market Insite
Value: undisclosed
Advisers: undisclosed
- Lawson Software, and its parent company Infor, are adding governance capabilities to their ERP (enterprise resource planning) software with the acquisition of Approva
Value: undisclosed
Advisers: undisclosed
