Eastern investment sparks Tinglobal world domination plan

UK firm hails improved industry attitude towards second-user kit

Second-user kit firm Tinglobal has handed over a 51 per cent stake in the company to Singapore-based DeClout in an effort to expand its global footprint.

Singapore-based DeClout is publicly listed on the country's SGX stock exchange and employs more than 220 staff. Cirencester-headquartered Tinglobal will form part of DeClout's Procurri business division - which focuses on refurbished IT kit and services - once the £6.1m deal is finalised in May.

Currently, Tinglobal is owned by private equity firm NVM and two of its directors, David Gutteridge and Matt Jordan. But once the deal is finalised, their stakes will be halved to make way for 51 per cent to be passed to DeClout.

All 88 of Tinglobal's staff will remain in the business, along with its management team, which will be joined by DeClout execs from both Asia and the US.

Tinglobal chairman Gutteridge said the deal would pave the way for the firm's future growth in the global market.

"We are the biggest player in the second-user mid-range market [now]," he said.

"The truth is that there aren't any global players. There are big ones in the US and a few in Europe but nobody has a leg on each continent.

"What we get [from the deal] is access to the other markets. We can buy and sell around the globe and satisfy [customers] around the globe too. We want to move into services, and there are opportunities arising in Europe for that."

The firm once harboured ambitions to float on the stock market, but Gutteridge conceded that a changing market meant this was no longer the best option for growth.

"We thought about an IPO," he said, "but we didn't change; the market did. To be significant on AIM you have got to be bigger than us, so we took investment from private equity."

He added that the recession meant businesses had their heads turned by the idea of buying often cheaper, second-user kit and that even though the economic times have improved somewhat, appetite for the equipment remains strong.

"We gained bigger, credible customers which looked at it, bought it and liked it," he said. "They saw we were a viable alternative to new [kit] and that helped us... and the impression has stuck."