Endless firm saves jobs with rescue deal

About 340 jobs have been saved at a £47m-turnover provider of IT managed services after the business was sold out of administration to Endless-backed Liberata.

Matthew Cowlishaw, Dominic Wong and Paul Meadows from business advisory firm Deloitte were appointed as joint administrators of Coventry-based Trinity Expert Systems Ltd, Eurodata Systems Ltd and TES Group Ltd on 10 October 2013.

Following a period of marketing, the administrators sold the associated business, trade and assets to Liberata the same day. About 340 employees were all transferred across to the new business.

The Coventry group is being recapitalised with £5m investment and working capital facilities from Liberata, which is majority owned by the Leeds-headquartered investment house Endless.

Endless portfolio director, James Woolley said  “The bolt on of Trinity and Eurodata into the Liberata Group offers the combined business greater strength in its offerings and bodes well for strong growth across all its key markets.”

Deloitte said the group had suffered cashflow difficulties as a result of investment in its cloud capabilities and the integration of Eurodata Systems, which it acquired in June 2011.

Liberata chief executive Dermot Joyce added: “Trinity has invested heavily in product and service innovations, with strong cloud offerings through its Desktop as a Service (DaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) solutions. These perfectly complement Liberata’s unique Business Process as a Service (BPaaS) platform. Our combined capability is well placed for growth.”

Deloitte partner Matthew Cowlishaw said: “The group’s underlying business is sound with a strong customer offering and future potential.

“It, therefore, attracted a large amount of interest from both private equity and trade buyers during the sales process. The sale secures the future of the business, its employees and provides the best outcome for creditors.”

Liberata provides business process outsourcing and support services for the public and private sector.