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This aritcle is from the Australian Financial Review. Click here for the original article.
Cybersecurity’s the flavour of the month - just ask Latitude Financial Group, apartment giant Meriton or... Quadrant Private Equity.
Quadrant’s $530 million second growth fund has just cut cheques for three separate cybersecurity businesses in New Zealand, Quantum Security Services, ZX Security and Helix Security Services. The trio offers governance, risk and compliance, penetration testing, cloud security and cyber strategy advisory services.
Together, they have over 200 enterprise and government customers and the combined revenue has grown by more than 35 per cent over the last three years.
They employ 120 staff, including founders and management who would retain ownership alongside Quadrant. The PE firm’s managing partner Simon Pither and investment director Louise Haslehurst, who led the investment, would join the group board.
Quantum’s founder Eugene Gibney, Helix’s founder Sam Andrews, ZX’s founder Simon Howard and ZX’s chief executive officer Ian White would work with Quadrant, which wants to broaden out the offerings as well as geographies including via M&A.
The deal size was not disclosed but Quadrant usually writes cheques worth $40 million to $100 million for its growth arm. The cyber deal was its fifth investment from the Quadrant Growth Fund No 2, which is one of the 12 funds that have housed the firm’s $7 billion worth of investor capital over the years.
Information technology has been a rich hunting ground for the firm. It booked an eye-watering eight-times return on Arq Group, buying it for $35 million in 2019 and exiting two years later in a $290 million sale to Singtel Group subsidiary NCS.
In another M&A triple jump, it picked up Amazon Web Services and Microsoft cloud specialists Cevo, Arnico and D6 Consulting in December.
Quadrant was advised by PwC, Bell Gully and OC&C Strategy Consultants.