The 14 biggest reseller and MSP acquisitions of 2021

The 14 biggest reseller and MSP acquisitions of 2021

What were the biggest deals of the year? CRN rounds up the top 14 acquisitions from 2021

M&A in the UK channel hit fever pitch in 2021.

Microsoft partner Content+Cloud sold up to Advania just last week to close off a year that has seen a phenomenal uptick in M&A deals.

Whether driven by the pandemic, the growing importance of technology or changes to capital gains tax, private equity has been the driving force behind much of this year's M&A activity.

A large part of the year was dominated by platform acquisitions or bolt on acquisitions from private equity businesses that were looking at the IT services space with interest.

By mid-March, there had already been at least seven platform acquisitions by private equity houses, and there were five deals in that month alone.

The end of Q1 saw more than 30 bolt-on acquisitions take place in the reseller and MSP space.

Performanta, Codestone, Phoenix Datacom and Systal all received private equity backing, while Node4 changed private equity hands.

The rest of the year saw more high-profile partners acquired by private equity, many of which feature on this list.

But as we approached the latter half of this year, M&A activity began to shift towards trade sales, with some of the largest deals of the year coming during the last few months.

Private equity is responsible for most of the sales on this list to fulfil the buy-and-build strategies of companies including Onecom, Nasstar and Wavenet, while others were to fuel the international ambitions of overseas-based businesses.

Let's take a look at the 14 largest acquisitions by revenue in the UK this year:

14) QUANTIQ

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Former QUANTIQ CEO Stuart Fenton

Announced: 20 October

Revenue: £31.1m

Acquired by: Avanade

The background:

Insight's former EMEA and APAC boss Stuart Fenton began a new venture called QUANTIQ in the summer of 2014. A year later, he vowed to balloon the business into a £25m run-rate outfit within the next two years.

By the end of 2020, the company had revenues of £31.1m and was a recognised leader in Microsoft's ERP and CRM suites.

Fenton left the QUANTIQ business following the sale to Avanade but has since started a new investment and advisory firm called Woolf Partners.

Rationale:

Microsoft Dynamics specialist QUANTIQ was bought up by joint Accenture and Microsoft venture Avanade in October this year.

Avanade says that the deal will add 300 new staff to its existing Business Applications team and "significantly extend" its Dynamics 365 capabilities.

What was said:

In an interview with CRN, Fenton described selling up to Avanade and walking away from the business was a "bittersweet thing" but said that he "walked away with immense pride in having worked with the best team I've ever worked with in my career."

The channel veteran said he was always sceptical about selling to private equity, but felt encouraged by a trade deal with Avanade given its track record with other acquisitions such as Altius in 2020.

"I've never put the company up for sale but I've had lots of people inquire. Avanade was the first time that I'd met an organisation that had the same shared values, goals and objectives and passion for the people that I do. From those initial conversations, it was incredibly easy to consider being part of their larger family."