The owner of one of Britain’s biggest providers of managed cloud services is to begin exploring a £500m-plus sale of the business.
Sky News understands that Mayfair Equity Partners has hired investment bankers to prepare a review of strategic options for Nasstar.
City sources said on Sunday that Raymond James had been appointed to oversee the review.
A sale process is expected to take place next year, with interest anticipated from strategic buyers and financial investors.
Nasstar designs, implements and manages hybrid connected multi-cloud solutions and communication platforms for enterprise and public sector customers.
Clients include Eurostar, the NHS, EE, and the Ministry of Defence.
People close to the company say it has been playing an important role in clients’ transition to digitally led operations as they adapt to hybrid-remote working.
Estimates suggest that the global public cloud computing market is worth close to $370bn and is expected to grow rapidly until the end of the decade.
Last year, Nasstar recorded £114m in revenue and £22.1m in earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, with the latter nearly doubling from the prior year – driven by a string of acquisitions and the launch of additional services.
Mayfair’s original investment in the group now called Nasstar took place in 2018, when the private equity firm led a management buyout of GCI Group from chairman Wayne Martin and the bank-backed Business Growth Fund.
Since then, the business has become a broader technology services provider, buying Modality in 2019, Nasstar the following year and KCOM’s national ICT Services business in 2021.
Two years ago, Wayne Churchill, a former Easynet Group executive, joined Nasstar to lead its transformation.
The company now employs more than 1,000 people.
Mayfair’s preparations for a sale of Nasstar follow a flurry of deals in the broader industry, including Version1’s sale to Partners Group for £675m, and Providence Equity Partners’ acquisition of Node4 for roughly £300m.
A Mayfair spokesman declined to comment.