This article is more than 1 year old

Compel sold to 2e2

Private equity claims reseller

Reseller 2e2 is paying £52.9m for all the shares of UK reseller and hire company Compel.

Compel shareholders will get 149.3 pence per share. This price represents a 14 per cent premium on yesterday's close or a 59.5 per cent premium on its average closing price over the last year. The Compel board unanimously recommends the offer.

2e2 was founded in 2002 and was bought by private equity groups in September 2006. It has 1,100 staff and has eight UK offices, six in Holland, one in Belgium, and three offshore offices in the Isle of Man, Guernsey and Jersey. It has several public sector clients as well as British Airways, Luton Airport, and NATS.

Compel has 400 staff and ten UK offices. It has two main businesses - an enterprise division and Hamilton Rentals, which hires out kit. Its last accounts showed turnover of £45m and pre-tax profits of £1.71m for the six months ended 31 December 2006.

Six Compel directors own 8.64 per cent of Compel shares and have signed irrevocable undertakings to sell them to 2e2.

David Frankling and David Curby, COO and executive director at Compel, will get senior management positions in the new group. Chief executive Neville Davis will leave the company and the board when the deal goes through. Compel's non executive directors are also resigning.

2e2 assured employees of Compel that all staff rights, including pensions, would be safeguarded but there will be some redundancies.

More on 2e2 here. ®

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