Comms VAR promises further acquisitions after London purchase

£25m VAR takes first steps into London

Comms VAR Arrow Business Communications has completed the second acquisition of its M&A spree, snapping up London-based Worksmart Technology.

Arrow secured an M&A pot last year September after private equity firm Growth Capital Partners took a 50 per cent stake in the company.

The VAR took its first steps into the energy market with the acquisition of broker Pulse Business Energy in March and has now followed this up with the takeover of Mitel partner Worksmart.

Arrow's recently appointed managing director John Harber said the acquisition was made for two key reasons.

"As well as all the normal reasons such as getting new customer relationships and all those sorts of things, we now have our own hosted Mitel platform in our own datacentre," Harber said. "We're selling hosted telephony to our customers and we're in complete control of the proposition from start to finish.

"Also, strangely, we didn't have an office in London so these guys will cover London for us."

Workspace will join the Arrow group of companies with a revenue of £4.7m, adding to the £24.6m that Arrow filed for 2015.

Harber said that Arrow's acquisition strategy is not yet complete - with the VAR still on the hunt for additions that will complement the firm from geographic and product perspectives - but remained tight-lipped on when the next deal will happen.

"We're halfway through [the acquisition strategy] so there is definitely news coming," he said. "We're still working on a couple."

Harber started at Arrow earlier this month, after leaving his role as UK general manager at Lenovo. He held the same role at Sony earlier in his career.

Despite joining Arrow only recently, his ties to the VAR go further back, having invested in the company in two of its funding rounds.

Harber also met Arrow CEO Chris Russell in 2000 when they attended the same business school in Los Angeles.

"Chris put this round together last year and I think he realised that it was getting to a size where he needed more senior firepower," Harber said.

"He's been the centre of the company and grown it from the early days when there were four or five of them all the way up to 140 people, but if we're to carry on on this route and integrate more regional offices and people, [it is now] the size [at which] he wanted to add to the senior team.

"He approached me and said 'we've got this war chest, the M&A thing is fun, you might want to be a part of this and I could do with your skill set in running a bigger company'.

"It's not often you get the opportunity to work for a private equity-funded company making acquisitions and genuinely building something. That mission sounded cool to me and you just don't get it with multinationals."