Outsourcery, the company co-founded by Dragon’s Den investor, Piers Linney, is expected to be sold to GCI Network Solutions.
The Manchester-based cloud service provider has been hit by a troubled 12 months, which it has previously blamed on “partner product launch delays.” During that time, it’s taken a £4m loan from Vodafone and UKFast’s Lawrence Jones also invested £1m in the company. In April this year, Vodafone stepped in again to give the firm working capital.
In a statement to the stock exchange, the company said:
“Agreement has been reached to sell substantially the entire business and assets of the Company’s trading subsidiary Outsourcery Hosting Limited to GCI Network Solutions Limited.
“In order to complete the sale, it will be necessary to appoint Administrators, and the Board of Outsourcery has resolved to appoint partners from EY as Administrators for this purpose. The appointment is expected to be made today, and the sale is expected to complete shortly thereafter.”
Yesterday evening, Investec Bank, which was the company’s nominated adviser and broker resigned “with immediate effect.” Should it not appoint a replacement within a month, trading on AIM will be cancelled.
Directors said in a statement that it was “highly unlikely that a replacement Nominated Adviser would be appointed.”
GCI has offices across the country, including Manchester and Wakefield and has a long standing relationship with one of Outsourcery’s biggest backers, Vodafone. It acquired Vodafone Platinum Partner, CommsXchange in 2014.
Piers Linney took to Twitter, to thank staff for their “hard work, taking risks , innovating and creating a unique biz [sic] for the buyer to take forwards.”
He added that it wasn’t “a demise” and that the business was being sold to a “happy new owner. We had plans to keep growing, but ran out of fuel and the support required.”
