43 Six Degrees

Revenue: £93.5m (-12%)

Net profit: -55.9% Staff: 449

Six Degrees has the potential to be the "biggest name in the UK secure cloud services market", new CEO Simon Crawley-Trice proclaimed upon his appointment in May 2021. Built on a series of 17 quickfire acquisitions and counting NatWest and Barclays among its clients, the Charlesbank Capital-backed outfit saw revenues tumble 12 per cent to £93.5m in its year to 31 March 2021. Although security and early revenue from its new public cloud generated growth, this was more than offset by declines in unified comms and lower equipment resale.

Covid impact

Although Six Degrees' most recent annual accounts barely overlapped with the pandemic, it did concede that it has a "number of clients" operating in Covid-hit verticals.