Where is the smart money going in support services?

Thursday, April 29, 2010 | Posted by: Fiona Cullinan
Categories: Financing , Thought Leadership | Tags: business, investment, report, M&A, recovery, money, outsourcing, support services

The second report in Grant Thornton’s series looking at where the smart money is going in business was released this week. This time the focus is on the support services sector, which has already seen a strong recovery in the value of private equity investments in 2010.

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Summary
Support services covers a huge range of businesses, from payment and IT services to equipment hire, cleaning to security services.

Our latest report, Where is the smart money going in support services?, shows the M&A value of support services soaring amid increasing competition between private equity and trade bidders. For example, in Q1 of 2010 alone, the total value of private equity investments in Support Services was £1.1 billion – equal to the total value recorded in the whole of 2009.

And the competition is set to intensify Almost all of the private equity practitioners surveyed (97%) said that they planned to make an investment in Support Services over the coming 12 months. The most attractive sub-sectors within support services look set to be business process outsourcing (BPO), operational support and facilities management.

David Ascott, Private Equity Partner at Grant Thornton, said:

“The outsourcing drive by both financial service providers and public service providers is attracting ever more investors. It is therefore not surprising that our survey identified business process outsourcing as the most attractive sub-sector.”

Within BPO, respondents identified payment services, IT services, as well as HR and payroll as particularly attractive.

Download the report
Where is the smart money going in support services?

In ICT?
Read the first report in the series, which looked at Where the smart money is going in ICT?