CBPE Capital LLP is a London-based private equity firm which invests in the UK mid-market. They were looking to invest in the Centralis Group to support the company’s expansion plans and engaged us to provide the technical due diligence.

The Investee

Centralis Group is a leading global corporate solutions provider offering a full range of corporate services to its global client base. These include services across corporate, debt administration, business office, treasury outsourcing and fund services.

Centralis, which was founded in 2006, is headquartered in Luxembourg and currently has offices in 11 other countries.

How we helped

“We’d used you before and were impressed with the service. We like the fact that you bring in industry experts and sector specialists.” said Adam Richardson, Investment Director at CBPE, “We have a shortlist of names that we consider using when it comes to due diligence. We go with what we know, and who we trust.”

“What we really wanted to understand, from an IT perspective, was how resilient and scalable Centralis was, and what work needed to be done to ensure that the environment was sufficiently scalable for our growth ambitions,” said Adam, “We want to follow a buy and build strategy so it was important there was a robust IT infrastructure for the platform so we could easily onboard other businesses.”

“The work Centralis do is regulated in a number of jurisdictions and there are quite stringent controls they have to have in place in terms of management of client information and broader management of their IT environment to ensure that they are able to scale and of course, able to service clients properly.”

“Your report was really helpful to get an idea of where the issues were within the business, but also what it was doing right,” continued Adam. “We were very impressed with the remote working infrastructure that was in place, and that was highlighted in the diligence report and has been proven out this year with the need to have remote working in place as of March. The business continuity plan was in place within 24 hours, and everyone could effectively work from home. Having the knowledge and confidence that the business was able to do that was great. It reassured us as we were going through the investment process.”

Future Plans

The deal was announced in October 2019, and completed in May 2020. CBPE has been partnering with management to grow the service capability and geographic coverage to accelerate Centralis’ international growth strategy both organically and through acquisition.

“A lot of the recommendations that were in the report are being put in place. It has very much helped us to get an understanding of the overall environment, and what needed to be done to get it up to a best practice. That was very helpful, especially given that it was tested sooner than we would expect it to be this year given the need to work from home,” concluded Adam.