Lumison snaps up rival Blue Square in £22m deal

Lumison, the veteran internet business, will today unveil its first acquisition since it was bought out last autumn by a private equity firm.

The company, which employs more than 50 people at its base in Leith and provides web connectivity and managed IT services, is to pay 22 million for Blue Square Data, a sector peer based in the south of England. Blue Square runs data centres in Maidenhead and Milton Keynes that allow customers to situate their computer servers in facilities with "highly resilient power, cooling and network connectivity and high levels of security".

Lumison, which was acquired by Bridgepoint Development Capital (BDC) in a move that was seen as a springboard for an acquisition spree, said Blue Square also provided customers with on-site engineers to diagnose and rectify IT faults, and also carry out technical project work.

Aydin Kurt-Elli, founder and now chief operating officer of Lumison, told The Scotsman: "The acquisition gives us scale, geography and customers as an IT player for the important business mid-market.

"We were in Edinburgh and south London and this takes us into Maidenhead and Milton Keynes, so hopefully it is the start of building a spine of IT data centres across the UK. We will also grow organically, and not just do deals for deals' sake."

Mark Howling, Lumison's executive chairman, said the acquisition was important partly because it trebled the group's data storage capacity. "Importantly, it means that our aim of creating an integrated, high-quality services provider for the full range of IT and network services that medium-sized organisations need has taken an important step forward," he said.

The enlarged business has about 2,500 customers and current turnover of 16m. Kurt-Elli, who was named young business leader of the year for 2010 in the Scottish Leadership Awards, is believed together with his family to have made a substantial six-figure sum from selling a majority stake in the business to BDC.