MBO brings change of regime at Hammer
Sangster and Easterbrook resign as team of five buy majority share
In a surprise move, Five executives at storage distributor Hammer completed a management buy-out (MBO) last week.
The five bought 80 per cent of the firm, with the remaining 20 per cent split evenly between former joint managing directors Paul Sangster and Steve Easterbrook, who have resigned. Financial details were not disclosed.
Sangster said the time was right to move on. "We made a conscious decision to choose the MBO. We could have floated the company, or made a trade sale. There has been no shortage of companies knocking on our door over the past few years," he said.
The MBO team consists of James Ward, Jason Beeson, Paul Matravers, Jason Goddard and Fritz Johnson.
Ward, who is the new managing director, told CRN: "We have been in discussions for about 10 months. We will now have a slight structural change to refocus and re-energise the staff."
Ward said there will be two teams: the solutions team, focusing on areas such as automated storage products, SANs and iSCSI; and the storage products team, focusing on the components business.
He added that the firm will not diversify from storage, but is looking to expand. "We have taken on additional space to enable us to grow, and aim to extend our reseller base," he said.
According to KPMG's Private Equity Group, MBO transactions with a total value of £5.42bn were completed in the UK in Q4 2004.
A representative for private equity at KPMG, said: "There is more confidence coming back into the IT sector after the year 2000 fall-out. There isn't going to be a massive MBO boom, but funding companies are now looking for good, healthy IT companies to invest in."