The proprietor of considered one of Britain’s fastest-growing accountancy companies is drawing up plans for a sale that would worth it at near £1.5bn.
Sky News has learnt that Hg, the non-public fairness agency, has employed funding bankers at JP Morgan to supervise an public sale of Azets.
City sources stated on Thursday {that a} sale was prone to put a price ticket on Azets – which was beforehand known as Cogital – of between £1bn and £1.5bn.
Azets claims to be the most important supplier of business-critical providers equivalent to accounting work, payroll and tax to small and medium-sized companies in northern Europe.
In whole, it boasts greater than 100,000 SME clients.
The firm trades beneath plenty of manufacturers, together with Blick Rothenberg, which fashioned a part of a 2016 merger that noticed Hg change into a shareholder within the enterprise.
Since then, it has made a string of acquisitions to bolster its presence in a number of nations.
Cogital was collectively based by John Connolly, the previous Deloitte UK chief govt and one of the outstanding figures in Britain’s skilled providers sector.
Mr Connolly, a former chairman of the safety providers supplier G4S, subsequently left the enterprise.
In 2019, Hg held talks in regards to the sale of a sizeable stake in Cogital to a number of different non-public fairness companies, together with Permira and BC Partners, however a transaction was by no means accomplished.
The group’s rebranding beneath the Azets title happened the next yr.
It lately introduced a strategic partnership with Xero, an accounting software program supplier.
A sale course of for Azets is unlikely to begin till subsequent yr, in response to insiders.
When it does, it should happen towards a backdrop of accelerating structural change within the accountancy world, with EY proposing a world separation of its audit and consulting companies.
A spokesman for Hg declined to remark.
Source: information.sky.com”