Palatine Private Equity invests in ACORA

Palatine Private Equity invested in Acora, the British managed IT services provider, on 9 March 2020, through its Buyout Fund III. Chief executive David Rabson, who had acquired the business through a management buyout in 2006, stayed at its head alongside his team. At the time of the investment, Acora employed around 300 people and provided IT support and cloud services to mid-market organisations, having grown organically on the strength of its partnership with Microsoft, which let it extend its services to Azure, Office 365 and Dynamics. It had already made two acquisitions, merging with the IT support company Plan-Net in 2017 and buying the managed services provider Just Computing in 2019. Palatine backed a buy-and-build strategy aimed at adding both scale and new capabilities, alongside investment in staff and in technology. The firm went on to support five acquisitions, starting with the cloud hosting provider Veber in December 2020, and sold the company to LDC in 2022, having doubled revenue to more than £60 million and taken headcount above 550, for a return of more than three times its investment in under three years. Raymond James advised Palatine on corporate finance, with Spectrum Corporate Finance on debt advisory, and due diligence carried out by Armstrong on commercial matters, RSM on financial and tax, Xaeus Blue on IT and Cyberfort on cyber security.