Equity firm buys U.K. conferencing firm MeetingZone for $62.6M

With the pace of adoption for webconferencing and videoconferencing picking up as companies continue to look for ways to shave costs, it's no surprise that M&A activity in the space also looks to be heating up.

Last month, for example, HP sold its visual collaboration business to Polycom for $89 million. Today, European private equity group GMT Communication is announcing it is acquiring conferencing and collaboration service provider MeetingZone for $62.6 million.

The U.K.-based company generated $17.9 million in revenue last year and has presence in the U.K., North America and Germany. The company expects to grow by more than 20 percent in the current financial year ending March 2012.

The company, launched in 2002 by Steve Gandy and Tom Duffy, has seen CAGR of 20 percent over the past three financial years. Both Duffy and Gandy will remain significant shareholders; Gandy will continue in his role as CEO and Duffy will become non-executive chairman.

MeetingZone provides an array of conference call and collaboration solutions to global organizations, from self-managed reservationless conference calls to event calls for shareholder communications. The company uses "e-business self-service" principles to fully automate its operations.

"Tim and Steve have built a superb business over the past nine years, and we look forward to working with this high-caliber team," said GMT partner Stefan Franssen, who will join the company's board. "With the U.K. and European conferencing markets forecast to grow at around 10 percent a year to the end of 2013--driven by the desire of corporates to cut travel and time costs, reduce carbon emissions and cater for increasing numbers of home or remote workers-- MeetingZone is ideally positioned to capitalize on its market-leading technology. There is also scope to pursue acquisitive expansion and grow this highly scalable business internationally."

For more:
- see this release

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