MBO, NCC Services Ltd and NCC Group Plc
In 1999, it sold its commercial divisions (turnover of less than £10m), which provided Escrow, Consultancy, System Engineering services to its existing management team supported by ECI ventures for £5m. This new company was named NCC Services Limited and later became NCC Group Limited of which the National Computing Centre held a 20% share. John Perkins became the new Managing Director of National Computing Centre, which remained a not-for-profit membership organisation.
The NCC Services Ltd management team of Managing Director Chris Pearse and directors John Morris, Peter Bird, and Chris Sadler was strengthened in March 2000 by the appointment of Rob Cotton as Finance Director and who also took over control of the Escrow division in May of that year, with Morris leaving at that time. Following a substantial fall off of revenues as Y2K came and passed, and due to the failure of the company before this date to invest in its general consultancy, security, system engineering and escrow business during the Y2k period, the Group began to make monthly losses before the benefits of the changes to the Escrow business instigated by Rob Cotton were felt and the company returned to profitability.
Renamed NCC Group, in May 2000, and with Escrow now the cornerstone of the Group, Rob Cotton led a secondary management buy-out in 2003 valuing NCC Group at £30m and supported by Barclays Private Equity. At this point, the National Computing Centre sold its shares in NCC Group as did Pearse, Bird and Sadler who left the business. The NCC Group floated on the AIM stock market in 2004 for £55m raising nearly £40m of new money. Since then through a number of successful acquisitions and effective management, the Group, by now fully a listed company on the London Stock Exchange since 2007, has grown to a market capitalisation of nearly £300m. The NCC Group now only provides global Escrow and Security services to over 15,000 customers including 94 of the FTSE 100.
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