FTI Consulting, who is managing the administration of 2e2, has found a new home for its subsidiaries in continental Europe (basically ex-Morse bits) at Logicalis, the IT solutions and managed services subsidiary of South Africa-headquartered reseller and ICT services group Datatec. Datatec will pay €24m/$31m in cash for the businesses, which had some 500 employees and turned over €150m last year with $8m EBITDA (unaudited!). Logicalis’ UK division will also take on certain of 2e2’s UK businesses along with some 70 employees; no consideration was mentioned (or was probably involved).
Datatec had reportedly been in the frame to resucitate 2e2 but, like others who also turned up to the wake, took a close look at the remains and decided to let it rest in peace. They had apparently bid for the business a couple of years back, too - just as well that went nowhere! Datatec issued a profit warning in January (see here) and had previously signalled weak trading in the UK (see here), so this acquisition is a ‘courageous’ move even given the bargain basement price. Datatec is doing a share placing to part finance the deal.
Prior, FTI had disposed of 2e2’s data centres to communications products and services firm Daisy (see Daisy chains up 2e2 data centres) and SAP consultancy Diagonal to G3 Global (see 2e2’s Diagonal goes ‘global’ with G3). Here endeth the disposals.