After 20 years shaping one of the few successful captive buyout operations, the man who said “sod this” to an education is stepping down at Barclays Private Equity.
Tuesday, 29th April 2008
BUSINESS SUPPORT SERVICES
If there was a strategy designed for support services, it would be buy and build. With companies looking to increase the number of services they offer clients, sometimes in highly fragmented markets, or to expand geographically, the sector is not short of mergers and acquisitions activity.
It has long been said that the three most crucial factors in a deal are management, management and management. That is just the case with support services deals, only more so. In this sector, successful businesses are “people” businesses.
Support services businesses can no longer presume to ride the growth curve that has carried the sector so far in recent years, or to rely on an endless stream of lucrative government contracts to ensure their success.
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