£18.1m deal spells growth for telecoms firm
When the owner and founder of a telecoms firm wanted to make an £18.1 million management buyout of his company possible, he turned to a Gloucestershire business to make it happen.
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The corporate finance team at Gloucestershire firm Hazlewoods has been revealed as a key player in a successful £18.1 million management buyout of Smart Numbers Ltd, described as “a market leading telecoms and digital marketing business”.
Smart Numbers, which has helped thousands of small business owners grow their companies by providing innovative telecom solutions and trackable marketing services, is now owned by private equity house YFM Equity Partners.
Tim Hutchings, the new managing director of the Southampton-based business, said: “With YFM's backing, our business is now ideally placed to pursue a new era of growth and to position itself as the go-to provider of lead generation support for increasing numbers of small businesses in the UK.”
David Wrench, a partner at YFM, said he too was confident Smart Numbers would ‘continue on a strong growth trajectory’.
It was Scott Woolaway, who founded Smart Numbers in 2005, who chose the Hazlewoods corporate team, led by Rich Grover, to handle the deal.
“Having worked with Hazlewoods for over a decade, Rich and his team were always the trusted advisors we were going to instruct,” said Woolaway, who will continue to hold a significant shareholding in Smart Numbers and a position on the board as vice chairman.
Smart Numbers began by providing small business owners with trackable inbound phone numbers that could be placed in advertising, as well as memorable telephone numbers and call answering services.
It has evolved into an Ofcom-registered telecoms reseller and Google Partner digital marketing business combining website development and optimisation services with connectivity and telephony solutions to help boost lead generation and is a leading provider of cloud-based VoIP (Voice of Internet Protocol) telephony services for small businesses.
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