Olive provides unified communications solutions which help corporate and small and mid-sized organisations in the UK to improve the way they run their IT infrastructure across voice and data applications and mobile devices.
BGF is the UK and Ireland’s most active investor. Established in 2011, BGF is a long-term patient investor, making initial investments between £1m to £15m for a minority equity stake. It backs ambitious teams across a range of sectors and funds a variety of growth plans.
BGF invested £10m of growth capital into Olive in 2016, with Stevens & Bolton acting for BGF on its investment. BGF has now announced the successful exit of its investment in Olive by way of a trade sale to LDC-backed Onecom in a merger that creates the largest B2B mobile, fixed-line and cloud specialist in the UK.
Matthew Simcox, investor at BGF, commented: “We have worked with the team at Stevens & Bolton throughout the lifetime of our investment in Olive Communications. Over the last five years Olive has grown to more than £31m in annual revenue and become a market leader in cloud communications. We are grateful to the support from Joe Bedford and Nassar Nassar at Stevens & Bolton during this time, which has culminated in the successful exit of the business to Onecom.”
Joe Bedford, Corporate Partner at Stevens & Bolton, said: “We have been working with BGF for several years on a number of separate growth finance investments and exits and are proud to support BGF in its goal, to offer growing companies and ambitious entrepreneurs in the UK and Ireland patient capital and strategic support. We are delighted to have advised and supported BGF throughout its investment in Olive and to have worked with Matthew Simcox and the BGF team on the sale to Onecom.”
The Stevens & Bolton team was led by corporate partner Joe Bedford, supported by Nassar Nassar (senior corporate associate).
Joe Bedford