Why M&A activity kept this summer interesting

A spate of acquisitions this summer prevented the usual news lull experienced in August, Tom Wright explains

In the journalism profession the summer months are often referred to as "silly season", with the news tending to dry up around August as top execs in the industries we cover go off on holiday - choosing to save their big announcements for when everybody is back at work in September.

But this summer was a little different. Between June and August, a period usually reserved for mostly frivolous news stories, the CRN editorial team covered no fewer than 16 acquisitions in the UK channel.

The largest by some way was HP Inc's acquisition of Apogee, followed by Cancom's deal for OCSL, but a trend of smaller acquisitions also presented itself.

In a number of cases, these deals saw the founders of companies look to realise some of their hard work by selling up.

In our Spotlight feature on p10 (you can view the digital version of the issue here), we ask three private equity companies to offer their top tips for reseller bosses who want to maximise the value of their business before exiting.

Sticking with the M&A theme, we also round up the largest acquisitions and funding rounds in the cybersecurity industry from the first half of this year on p30.

This month's big interview is with XMA's CEO Lee Hemani and commercial director Andy Wright, who have overseen a period of consistent revenue growth at the Nottingham-based VAR, taking its sales to £400m last year. They tell us that the firm is now focused on boosting its relatively flat net profits.

Page 34 sees us round up the key information from this year's European Channel Leadership Forum, hosted by the Mondrian hotel in London. The two-day event saw a host of the European channel's biggest names wax lyrical about the current state of the market, but admit that Brexit's looming presence is casting an ever-greater shadow.

A second ECLF article on p40 sees former Sainsbury's CEO Justin King talk delegates at the event through the supermarket's disasterous IT implementation which saw him join a business on its knees.

Continuing the European focus, we have an interview with Getronics CEO Nana Baffour on p36.

Baffour has set his sights on turning the Dutch giant into a $2bn-revenue firm, after re-entering the US market earlier this year.

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