Vendor lineage
Damovo - a division that outlived three owners
European technology services company spun out of Ericsson in 2001, now owned by Global Growth.
Damovo was created in 2001 when Apax Partners bought Ericsson’s direct sales and service operations for around US$480 million, in a management buyout that started life in Glasgow and is now headquartered in Dusseldorf. It delivers unified communications, enterprise networks, contact centre and managed services in more than a hundred and fifty countries.
Its own description says over fifty years of experience in a company founded in 2001, and both halves are true at once. The experience belonged to Ericsson’s enterprise division and travelled with the people when the division was sold. That is the honest shape of a carve-out: the legal entity is new and the engineers are not, which is why buyers pay for these businesses at all.
The financial history is the part worth recording, because it is the outcome private equity does not advertise. Apax bought it in 2001 and by December 2006 had handed its entire equity stake to the company’s creditors; a debt-for-equity restructuring followed in 2007, with bondholders exchanging around EUR358 million of debt for ownership. The company that had been bought with borrowed money ended up belonging to the lenders.
It was then split and sold in pieces - the United Kingdom business one way, the European business another - and acquired again in 2022. Through four ownership structures the customer list stayed recognisable: airlines, logistics companies, a central bank and a prison service, all of them running voice and network estates that somebody has to keep answering the telephone about.
- Damovo (Wikipedia): founded 2001, headquartered in Dusseldorf; originated as a spin-off of Ericsson’s direct sales and service operations, acquired and spun off by Apax Partners in a management buyout led by Pearse Flynn, and based in Glasgow at the time; Flynn was chief executive until 2003; in December 2006 Apax handed its entire equity stake to the company’s creditors; partnerships include Avaya, Cisco, Microsoft, Extreme Networks, Genesys and Mitel, with support in more than 150 countries
- The Register, January 2015 - Damovo was founded in 2001 when Apax Partners acquired the direct sales operation from Ericsson for US$480 million; it went through debt-for-equity restructuring in 2007 after financial difficulty, with bondholders including Goldman Sachs and Och-Ziff exchanging EUR358 million of bonds for equity; customers named include British Airways, DHL, HP, the Irish Prison Service, Credit Suisse and the Bank of England
- Damovo - company description: over 50 years of experience in the ICT industry, direct operations in 14 countries and partnerships enabling support in over 150; portfolio spanning unified communications and collaboration, enterprise networks, contact centre, cybersecurity, cloud and global managed services