Private equity firm Inflexion is reported to have entered talks to sell Manchester-headquartered ANS for around £400m.
According to Sky News, Inflexion has hired corporate finance specialists Arma Partners to advise on the sale.
ANS is a cloud hosting provider and employs 700 people.
Neither ANS and Inflexion have commented publicly on the reports but the timing of the planned sale is not a surprise.
It was back in 2018 that Inflexion, which is a leading European mid-market private equity firm, invested in UKFast, one of the UK’s leading cloud hosting providers.
UKFast was founded by husband-and-wife team Lawrence and Gail Jones.
However, Lawrence Jones stepped down as CEO in 2019 a week after a Financial Times investigation accused him of sexual assault and workplace misconduct after interviewing more than 30 former employees at UKFast.
At the time he and his wife both owned 30.9 per cent of UKFast while Inflexion owned 31.6 per cent.
In 2020 the couple exited the tech business completely after Inflexion became the majority shareholder with a 75 per cent stake.
The entrepreneur’s fall from grace was completed in December 2023 when he was jailed for 15 years after being convicted at Manchester Crown Court for the historic rape of two women in Greater Manchester. It followed an earlier conviction for a sexual assault against a third female.
A year later he was stripped of his MBE.
In June 2021 Inflexion acquired ANS to create a UK digital technology service leader.
In January 2022 the two companies merged and officially rebranded as ANS under the leadership of CEO Paul Shannon, who was subsequently succeeded by Richard Thompson (pictured).
The combined company is expected to be worth between £300m-£400m and is expected to attract interest from other private equity firms.