Exclusive Group has closed its “major investment transaction” with private investment firm Permira, after rejecting takeover or investment moves by rival larger distributors and others. The future ownership of Exclusive has been in question for some months, but Exclusive said it did not want to “dilute its distinctive, value-oriented approach by consolidating with other major VAD players”.
The pan-European distributor, which has also recently broken into the US market, says it will continue to focus on security and cloud solutions.
Olivier Breittmayer, CEO at Exclusive Group, said: “Cybersecurity and cloud are the leading business priorities in this age of digital transformation, both as separate disciplines but – even more so – joined together as a co-dependent whole. Both sectors are becoming increasingly complex, and both suffer from a huge lack of skills and knowledge.
“The industry needs a VAD that can fill this gap and we aim to do that. We believe we have the right and relevant focus: vendors, services and skill sets to build a compelling offer for channel partners and vendors to realise significant profitable growth.”
To address the skills and knowledge deficit, Breittmayer claimed the company had the “highest ratio of engineers of any distributor in its class”.
Michail Zekkos, a partner in the technology team at Permira, said: “Preserving the entrepreneurial spirit and independence of Exclusive, while continuing to innovate with speed and at scale will be key to executing on its next phase of growth.”
Last month, Exclusive said it was combining the operations of two of its most successful sales regions to create a single operational presence in Northern Europe. The new region comprises the whole of the Nordics (Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden) and Benelux - Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg. Those regions generated combined annual revenues of around €350m and are now headed up by Kris Van Den Bergh.
