Click here for printer friendly page

UK ISIS sells Tricom Group for £32m

Middle-market UK buy-out firm Isis Equity Partners has defied difficult exit conditions with £32m sale of Tricom Group to BSS.

ISIS said the sale of its plumbing merchants to a trade buyer had generated an annual return of over 50 per cent.

‘This represents an excellent result for ISIS and our clients against a generally difficult backdrop for trade exits,' commented Adam Holloway, head of portfolio management at ISIS.

ISIS backed the £6m management buy-out from German Mannesmann in 1998 and has reportedly multiplied its initial investment by a factor of 4.3.

Exit opportunities have been scarce since public markets crashed in 2000. Trade buyers have been reluctant to make new acquisitions in the face of economic uncertainty and the IPO market has been all but dead.

Recent figures from KPMG showed the UK IPO market at its weakest for a generation, without a single listing on the main UK stock exchange in the first quarter of this year.

The combination of these two factors, weak public markets and preoccupied trade buyers, has given an enormous boost to secondary buy-outs. Sales from one financial buyer to another have provided rare liquidity to the private equity industry in recent months.

Copyright © 2003 AltAssets