Mark Allen, a veteran of multiple acquisitions and a long serving architect of GCI’s success commented, “GCI has come a long way over the last 9 months. At the start of the year we took a long hard look at our operation, and our marketplace, and set about finessing an organisation that has been 16 years in the making. The securing of this £50m fund is another step in our journey and our relentless pursuit of building a world class managed services organisation.”
Mark Allen continued, “In terms of strategy, we are focusing GCI’s Services and Solutions around the needs of our customers and the irreversible trends in the business landscape: the need to support an increasingly mobile workforce; the need to enable and support digital transformation & collaboration; the need for increasingly sophisticated security and compliance solutions; the need to support the ‘rise and rise’ of the omnichannel and diverse communications platforms. This £50m fund will help us robustly address those customer challenges and will help take GCI to the next level.”
Adrian Thirkill, CEO at GCI added, “This is another great milestone for GCI. As an indicator of our resolve to build something special, our investments to date have already positioned GCI as a leading player in Unified Communications with more than 60 Microsoft Certified Professionals within our 300 strong organisation". To further endorse our confidence in the strength of Microsoft’s technology stack, GCI will be a Headline Sponsor at Microsoft’s Future Decoded event at Excel, London on 1-2 November. So, in brief, we are already making very good use of the additional funding now available to us and will continue to invest in our capabilities around Office 365, Skype for Business, Azure, Cloud PBX and our growing PCI Compliance Services.
Zoe Clarke of KPMG who helped GCI’s CFO Mark Allen broker the deal commented, “This is a landmark transaction which will help GCI to take forward its significant growth ambitions by allowing it to take advantage of acquisition growth opportunities as the business looks to build-out and add capabilities. Securing such a flexible bank facility not only shows the strength of the company’s strategy, but is also an indicator of the attractive bank market conditions still available for businesses with strong credit profiles.”
On behalf of the Royal Bank of Scotland Corporate Transactions team, Dan Salt, Regional Head Midlands and West added, “We are delighted to support GCI’s ambitious growth strategy and demonstrate our confidence in this sector by backing a strong management team with a clear focus on what they want to achieve in delivering world class telecommunications and IT solutions.”
HSBC’s Area Corporate Director Roger Pratt commented, “We are delighted to support GCI through the next stage of its life cycle. Operating in an ever-changing ICT sector as technology advances, the group is expanding quickly and has been highly successful over a sustained period of time. GCI’s executive management have a clear strategic plan for the next five years, and we look forward to supporting GCI during this exciting period.”