Creates one of the UK’s largest Customer Experience and Unified Communications specialists

Connect Managed Services, and competitor G3 Comms announce the merger of the two businesses, creating a market-leading Customer Experience (CX) and Unified Communications (UC) managed services provider, generating annual revenues in excess of £55 million. The combined group will be one of the largest firms of its kind in the UK, and is backed by Apiary Capital, who acquired a majority stake in G3 in March 2019.

Connect supports global enterprise customers such as Johnson & Johnson, BP and Diageo in the deployment and management of their CX and UC environments. The company has achieved strong growth since the LDC-backed MBO in 2014, culminating in turnover in the year to December 2018 of £30m. This transaction marks a successful exit for LDC.

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G3 Comms is an established business communications and network integrator, supporting multi-site UK enterprises, often with international operations. G3’s global reach is supported by its international network providing resilient voice and data services around the world. Turnover for the year to April 2019 was in excess of £20 million and its roster of for high-profile clients include Volkswagen and Morningstar.

Connect’s Alex Tupman and Martin Cross, will lead the group as CEO and CTO respectively, together with G3’s James Arnold-Roberts and Adam Young, who will become group Managing Director and COO respectively. The board will be supplemented with the appointments of industry veterans Mark Thompson as Chairman, and G3 co-founder, Tony Parish, as non-executive director.

Group CEO, Alex Tupman, said, “Our objective is to create a highly scalable and focussed business that can support the needs of a far greater and more diverse customer base, located within both the UK and abroad. The merger of G3 and Connect brings together two businesses with highly complementary capabilities which will enable our combined clients to derive significant benefits from the newly acquired skills provided by the enlarged team, together with the ability to offer an extended portfolio of specialist and proven products and services.

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James Arnold-Roberts, CEO of G3 commented, “We are really excited to be joining forces with Connect. The combination of the two businesses will bring even greater benefit to our existing customers while our emerging scale will allow us to reach new prospects both here in the UK and around the world. When we looked at Connect’s capabilities alongside our own – including our dedicated global network infrastructure – it was clear that this was the perfect fit.”

Nicki Boyd, Apiary Capital partner, commented, “We are delighted to be supporting the compelling merger of Connect and G3. Alex and James have a shared vision of building a platform of significant scale in the market they both serve so well. We believe this is just the start of an exciting and highly productive collaboration and it is fantastic to be working with experienced and likeminded people who are totally aligned with our goals and objectives.”

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