Deal is biggest investment ever in cyber/cloud value-added distribution; further growth planned as management team prepares to extend services, portfolio and global footprint

PARIS -Friday, April 13th 2018 [ AETOS Wire ]

(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Exclusive Group, the value-added services and technologies (VAST) group, announced significant new investment from funds advised by global private equity firm Permira to take a majority stake in the business. The transaction secures substantial funding and resources to fuel the next stage in Exclusive Group’s development and hyper-growth, with the existing management team, led by CEO Olivier Breittmayer, further focused on expanding service offerings, vendor portfolio and presence, operations and global footprint.

“This investment both validates and enables our trajectory to become the global specialist VAD for cybersecurity and cloud migration, extending our value-based service offerings and strengthening our global reach,” said Olivier Breittmayer, CEO of Exclusive Group. “We are delighted to welcome on board Permira and their renowned technology team, whose resources will be invaluable in the next chapter of the Exclusive story. This partnership preserves and builds upon the unique business culture and platform that our people have shaped over the last decade, and which holds the key to our continuing success.”

Exclusive Group’s unique positioning and business strategy is centred on a ‘global-local’ value model that exceeds both the scale of local VAD specialists and the general approach of global broad line distributors. This has brought unprecedented success for more than a decade by targeting two core markets (cybersecurity and cloud) with very high growth profiles. The resulting strong organic growth and astute strategic acquisitions have seen a doubling of revenues every two years, culminating in total sales for 2017 of 1.75bn€ (up 38% from 1.27bn€ in 2016).

Michail Zekkos, Partner in the technology team at Permira said: “The escalating threat landscape and the increasing complexity of underlying infrastructures continues to position cybersecurity as one of the fastest growing and resilient segments of global IT spend. In a market that is characterised by structurally high product velocity, we believe that the role of value-added services and technologies, occupied by Exclusive at the centre of the demand generation channel, will become ever more critical in years ahead. We have been following the success of Exclusive for many years and look forward to support them as they consolidate their unique position in the market.”

The transaction is subject to customary conditions and is expected to close in the next few months.

Advisors on the transaction included: Morgan Stanley, Natixis Partners, White & Case, PWC, Fidal KPMG and Goodwin Procter.

 
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180412006232/en/

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Greg Halse / Ellie Stansfield, +44 (0) 1291 626200
exclusivegroup@wearecohesive.com

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