PE’s Impact Felt Again As BigHand Buys Consulting Firm

Following Levine Leichtman Capital Partners’ (LLCP) acquisition of rapidly expanding tech group BigHand, the company has bought resource management firm Mason & Cook – the first M&A deal of what is likely to be many more to come, following the change of private equity ownership.

In August, BigHand’s then owners, Bridgepoint Development Capital, sold the business to LLCP for an undisclosed amount.

At the time of the deal two months ago, John O’Neill, a Senior Managing Director at LLCP, said: ‘We look forward to supporting them in expanding the business organically and through acquisitions where it makes sense for customers.’

And they have not disappointed, moving in a matter of weeks to make their first acquisition since taking ownership of the BigHand platform. The question now is how many more acquisitions do they have planned…? Probably several more, given the current market conditions and popularity for platform building at the moment, (see Hg and Litera for example).

Sam Toulson, CEO at BigHand, commented: ‘Mason & Cook bring incredible legal expertise to our business as well as the market leading product in the space. It’s exciting to complete this acquisition so quickly under our new ownership with LLCP and I’m delighted to welcome Dave and the Mason & Cook team to BigHand.’

Financial details of this transaction were also not disclosed.