MARCUS ALLCHURCH
Managing Partner
This marks the fifth Telecoms, Cloud & Managed Services transaction which the Acuity team has closed in three months, and another strategic outcome for our client. This underlines our leadership in the sector, deep understanding of strategic value drivers and ability to deliver exceptional outcomes with counterparties from around the globe.
Thrive, a premier provider of NextGen Managed Services in the US, has acquired ONI, a leading UK Cloud, hybrid managed IT, Cisco Gold Partner and data centre services provider based in Luton, Bedfordshire, England. Thrive has accelerated growth with its recent investment from Court Square Capital Partners, and the ONI acquisition marks the company’s initial steps to significantly increase its geographic footprint, both domestically and internationally.
“ONI is a tremendous IT managed services company with deep Cisco WAN, Unified Communication and Cloud expertise,” said Rob Stephenson, CEO of Thrive. “We were attracted to ONI due to their strong management team, led by CEO Kevin Kivlochan, attractive customer base, and desirable geographic location, just north of London. Thrive plans to add our robust Microsoft and cyber security capabilities to assist the ONI clientele, and we’re very excited to utilize their expert WAN engineering team to drive additional value to Thrive’s client base.”
ONI has been providing transformative digital technologies for more than 25 years and is a highly reputable centre of excellence for digital transformation. The company is a leading provider of IT solutions and services to both the public sector and commercial markets. ONI’s specific expertise includes core network infrastructure, unified communications and collaboration, contact centre solutions, data centre services, connectivity and cyber security. ONI Cloud services are delivered from its Tier 3+ data centre, located in the South East of England.
“ONI has been committed to providing our customers with the availability, performance and agility required to transform their business,” said Kevin Kivlochan, CEO of ONI. “We are ecstatic to join the Thrive family to complement and grow its extensive NextGen portfolio of solutions with our critical and business assured infrastructure objectives, delivering performance, high availability, flexibility, and redundancy. This will enable us to further advance our support to our existing clients in the UK with a wider range of service and support offerings.”
Mr. Kivlochan will become the Chief Executive for Thrive’s European Operations, reporting directly to Rob Stephenson, and all ONI personnel will remain onboard working directly for him.
With the completion of this transaction, ONI will mark Thrive’s eleventh acquisition since 2016. Recently, Thrive scaled its Mid-Atlantic region presence in the US with the acquisitions of Howard Tech Advisors and Apex IT Group.
Kevin Kivlochan, CEO at ONI:
“I was amazed and delighted in equal measures by the professionalism and work ethic of all at Acuity in our recent project. The whole team were highly professional at all times, helped us through the process in a very supportive way and guided us where needed. The amazing work ethic of all the team was truly fantastic and I would personally recommend them to anyone who is considering a similar project or process.”
Marcus Allchurch, Managing Partner at Acuity Advisors:
“I’m thrilled to have supported the shareholders of ONI on the sale to Thrive, representing another great transaction for Acuity in the Telecoms, Cloud & Managed Services space. We were appointed as a result of our unique sector insight, perspective on the sector and access to global buyers. No other mid-market advisors can deploy a comparable team of M&A professionals who have worked in senior roles in the industry. This is our fifth TCMS transaction to close in three months, and I look forward to announcing more transactions in the coming weeks.”
“I was amazed and delighted in equal measures by the professionalism and work ethic of all at Acuity in our recent project. The whole team were highly professional at all times, helped us through the process in a very supportive way and guided us where needed. The amazing work ethic of all the team was truly fantastic and I would personally recommend them to anyone who is considering a similar project or process.”
KEVIN KIVLOCHAN | CEO
ONI
Team Members
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Marcus joined Acuity in 2014, before which he held senior leadership and corporate finance positions with some of the UK’s most successful advisory and telecoms businesses. Roles with EE, KPMG Corporate Finance and BDO Corporate Finance have seen Marcus work in the UK and across the globe with successful entrepreneurs seeking exit, and at board level with multi-national corporates looking for growth through organic and inorganic investment.