Daisy founder Riley to lead Damovo Europe M&A spree

Investment firm Oakley Capital teams up with Matt Riley to acquire integrator's European businesses

Private equity shop Oakley Capital Investments Limited has snapped up the Irish and mainland European businesses of VAR Damovo.

The London-listed finance house announced to the markets today that its successor fund, dubbed Oakley Private Equity II, has "acquired a significant majority of the shares in the European companies" of Damovo.

Investing alongside Oakley is Matthew Riley, founder of UK telecoms firm Daisy Group, which has acquired Damovo UK Limited in a separate deal. Riley will be taking on the post of executive chairman of Damovo Europe, the same role he currently holds at Daisy.

The Oakley-Riley deal covers the comms integrator's businesses in Germany, Switzerland, Poland, Belgium, Ireland, and the Damovo Global Services unit. In total the companies employ 271 people across 14 locations.

"The growth opportunity in unified communications over the coming three to five years is significant and Damovo Europe is perfectly positioned to materially grow its share of this expanding market," said Riley. "It is an organisation that customers believe delivers high-quality communications solutions to its customers and I am personally very excited about the future for the company."

In its statement issued today, Oakley explained that it will be using to deal to "back a strong and experienced management team, led by Matthew Riley, in a European roll-up strategy, replicating the success of Daisy Group"; the UK telecoms outfit has made close to 50 acquisitions in its 24-year lifespan.

Oakley partner Rebecca Gibson said: "Damovo Europe is already very well established in a number of European markets and the fact that the worldwide unified communications market is expected to be worth in excess of $75bn by 2020 with significant growth expected to come from within Europe, makes Damovo Europe an obvious choice to add to Oakley's portfolio. I am particularly pleased that Matthew Riley will be investing alongside us and will be executive chairman. He has an exceptional record of valuation creation in the sector."