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35-612: NCC Group was formed in June 1999, when the National Computing Centre sold its commercial divisions to its existing management team supported by private equity firm ECI Ventures . This new company was named NCC Services Ltd and was renamed NCC Group Ltd in May 2000. In 2000, Rob Cotton was hired as finance director and subsequently took responsibility for the Group's escrow division. In 2003 he led

70-473: A 3.3x return. In February 2017 ECI announced the sale of Clarke Energy to Kohler Co for a reported £300m. The sale of Reed & Mackay (premium corporate travel company) in August 2016 was ECI's 100th exit since 1990, and generated a multiple of 3.4x cost to investors. In February 2016, ECI sold Citation, a provider of HR, employment law, and health & safety solutions to 16,000 SMEs, to HGCapital for

105-489: A 3x return on its investment. In March 2014 ECI sold CarTrawler to BC Partners for a reported €450m, returning 6x money to investors. In February 2014 ECI sold M2 Digital to The Rigby Group through its technology brand SCC (Specialist Computer Centres) . ECI sold healthcare IT company Ascribe to AIM-listed clinical software supplier EMIS Health Group in September 2013 generating a 2.1x return. The ECI Growth Survey

140-696: A UK data privacy and information security compliance software and service provider. In September 2023, ECI acquired Commify, a business messaging platform, from Hg Capital Trust for a sum of €300 million. In June 2022, ECI acquired BCN Group, a UK-based cloud and IT managed services company, from Beech Tree Private Equity. Earlier investments have included CIPHR, Mobysoft, CSL, KB Associates, Peoplesafe, Travel Chapter, Moneypenny, 4Ways, Arkessa, The Clear Group, Bionic, Content+Cloud, Imagesound (a leading supplier of audio and screen media), Tusker, Investis Digital, Auction Technology Group , and Avantia, an online home insurance company that trades under

175-555: A founding member of the cyber security certification body CREST, including practical examination “cheat sheets” for the CREST CCT INF and CCT APP examinations were leaked on to the GitHub and Dropbox platforms. The leaked documents described internal training procedures involving “cloned examination rigs” and offered step by step walkthroughs of CREST examinations. Due to the breach of exam integrity CREST suspended practical examinations and in

210-446: A reported £185m. generating a 5.4x return on its investment. In June 2015 it sold Fourth Hospitality, a restaurant management software firm to Insight Venture Partners . In February 2015 ECI sold Wireless Logic, an M2M managed service provider, to CVC Capital Partners generating 6.1x money return. In October 2014 ECI sold XLN Telecom to the company's management and Blackstone's credit business GSO Capital Partners generating

245-518: A secondary buyout delivering 3.7x money whilst also reinvesting in the latter from its most recent fund. ECI exited mthree in December 2019, selling to Wiley (publisher) and generating a return of over 100% IRR. In June 2018 ECI announced the sale of Great Rail Journeys , generating a 3.6x return. In June 2017 ECI sold Kelvin Hughes to Hensoldt , (formerly Airbus Defence Electronics), which generated

280-555: A secondary management buyout and became chief executive of NCC Group Ltd. This valued the Group at £30 million and was supported by Barclays Private Equity. On 12 July 2004, NCC Group was admitted to trading on AIM, with the flotation raising £38.1 million before expenses. After rapid expansion, in July 2007 the Group made the move to the London Stock Exchange's main market. In August 2020, training materials, from NCC Group,

315-417: A statement said it "will be appointing an independent investigative panel.” NCC Group has expanded through a mixture of organic growth and acquisitions: In 2012 NCC Group announced the investment of £6 million over 15 months in a wholly owned subsidiary, Artemis Internet. This was used to apply for a new .secure generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) and develop an associated security programme. The application

350-568: Is the only survey in the UK focused exclusively on growth companies. It was launched in 2010 to give owners and directors of growth companies an opportunity to voice their opinion and influence the economic debate. A number of influential figures have been involved in the survey over the years including Mark Prisk , Karan Bilimoria, Baron Bilimoria , Howard Davies , Sir Danny Alexander , Carolyn Fairbairn , Sir John Timpson , and most recently Philip Shaw, Chief Economist at Investec. ECI's origins lie in

385-535: The "voice of the computer user" and offered no substantial services to its client base and became a shell company. In July 2013 the registered address was changed to an accommodation address in London and between then and July 2017 the operational address was at times listed as Aston Abbotts in Buckinghamshire, Bournemouth and Welwyn Garden City. In July 2017, NCC Ltd changed its name to IT Accreditations Limited and

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420-691: The HomeProtect brand. In February 2023, ECI sold Tusker to Lloyds Banking Group, for a value of c.£300m, generating a return of 6.2x. In September 2022, ECI realised its investment in MiQ, delivering a 6.1x return in a deal valued at a reported $ 900m. ECI originally backed the founders (Gurman Hundal and Lee Puri) in a minority investment in 2017 with MiQ growing to $ 45m of profit in the year before ECI exited. in June 2022, ECI sold The Clear Group, an insurance broking platform, to Goldman Sachs Asset Management having tripled Gross Written Premium to over £330m during

455-568: The Naked Leader and joint ventures included: the NCC/Ashridge Business School MBA; NCC/AQA Applied ICT; and ProfIT. Funds were spent attempting to develop new products and services including web hosting which did not prove commercially successful. In 2002 NCC adopted a policy of vigorous support for open-source software . Funds were also received from Microsoft towards a software evaluations centre. Contracts were won to support

490-611: The UK Royal Mail to Consignia. These survival strategies failed and the National Computing Centre diminished rapidly in size and turnover. NCC continued to make unsustainable losses but there was no change in strategic direction. To stem the losses NCC was forced to rapidly close or dispose of many of the acquisitions at a loss to the organisation. Michael Gough left the business in February 2008. In March 2008, Steve Markwell

525-536: 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

560-510: 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 £30 million 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

595-437: The business having already left its iconic building in 2010 it finally left Manchester. The company was formally recorded at Companies House as being insolvent and in a voluntary arrangement as of 2 March 2012. The insolvency practitioner dealing with the companies affairs was Wilkins Kennedy of London. It would appear that from this point NCC Ltd was no longer recognised by any trade body, association or any part of government as

630-593: The business. The NCC Group subsequently floated on the AIM stock market in 2004 for £55 million and was listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2007 with a market capitalisation of nearly £390 million as of June 2014. NCC received substantial proceeds from the sale of NCC Group Limited (circa £11 million between 2000 and 2003 plus dividends) and from the multi-million sale of its Manchester city centre buildings (Armstrong House and Oxford House) to Bruntwood Group. Following

665-637: The founding of "Equity Capital for Industry" in 1976 under a Bank of England initiative. The initial board of directors consisted of: Lord Plowden (chair), A. W. P. Stenham (Finance Director of Unilever ), Lord Seebohm (chair of Finance for Industry which became 3i ), Sir Jack Callard (former chair of ICI ), Anthony Touche (chair of Touche, Remnant ), Alfred Singer (Managing Director of National Giro ), Leonard Hall (General Manager of Clerical Medical and General Life Assurance ), Trevor Holdsworth (Deputy Chair, GKN ), Ernest Bigland (vice chair of Guardian Royal Exchange ), Peter Moody (joint investment manager,

700-650: The four year investment. In October 2021, ECI sold CPOMS, a provider of safeguarding software to schools, based in Skipton , England, to US firm Raptor Technologies. In February 2021, ECI announced the IPO of its portfolio company Auction Technology Group on the London Stock Exchange where it became a member of the FTSE250. In November 2020, ECI exited MPM generating a return of 4.4x. In February 2020, ECI exited both Encore Tickets, sold to TodayTix and Auction Technology Group, in

735-450: The insolvency of the pension fund later that year. Redholt Ltd was owned by a group of six shareholders, including former managers and two Directors of the insolvent National Computing Centre. Redholt Ltd, was renamed as The National Computing Centre Limited (NCC Ltd) in Feb 2011. In 2011 NCC Ltd extended its portfolio of services to include IT consulting, mainly as a virtual organisation through

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770-551: The millennium saw ECI raise their seventh fund (ECI7 - £175m) with leading growth investments including Thinkmoney and LateRooms (sold for a 9x return on investment ). In September 2023, ECI announced the final close of its twelfth buyout fund, ECI 12, hitting its £1 billion hard cap, beating a £900 million target. In April 2024, ECI acquired London-based global travel management company TAG, from Apiary Capital for an undisclosed amount. In November 2023, ECI invested in ISMS.online,

805-539: The ncc.co.uk domain name and company name became the property of NCC Group plc, so ending 50 years of an organisation trading as The National Computing Centre. ECI Partners ECI Partners is a growth focused private equity group based in the UK and the US, first established by the Bank of England in 1976. ECI typically invests up to £200m of equity (as part of an initial transaction) in businesses valued at up to £300m It

840-644: The others being the computer company International Computers Limited (ICL) and chip maker Inmos (both now defunct). Initially, most income came directly from government grants, but with the growth of NCC's commercial operations this ceased in 1989. During the 1970s and 1980s NCC had a joint venture with Blackwell Publishing (NCC Blackwell) which was a significant publisher of academic computing books. Between 1989 and 1996, NCC operated with five main divisions – education, consulting, escrow, membership services, and system engineering deriving income from membership fees and its commercial activities. A valued component

875-675: The retirement of Perkins, Michael Gough was appointed as CEO in 2000 and NCC pursued a new strategy of rapidly developing and expanding its membership services by acquisition. After 2000, and particularly after the second sale of its shares in NCC Group in 2003, acquisitions accelerated to acquire a number of related companies, membership organisations, publications, publishing rights and to fund joint ventures. The acquisitions included: Management Consultancy News; Conspectus; CIO Connect; The Construction Industry Computing Association; Certus; The Evaluation Centre; Institute of IT Training; The Impact Programme; and PMP. Publishing rights acquired included

910-520: The uptake of IT particularly amongst SMEs including open source software and the Open Source Academy, and the development of an accreditation standard for IT services which became operational in 2009. There was a re-branding exercise in which NCC re-branded as Principia, a brand that was quickly dropped and the NCC brand resumed, a move that seemed to echo a similarly named and disastrous re-branding of

945-551: The use of independent associate consultants. The 'new' NCC Ltd was not a mutual not-for-profit organisation, but retained some of the member organisations of the liquidated company and initially it delivered some of the same products and services. By the end of 2011, the 'new' NCC Ltd once again faced financial difficulties and in 2012 it sought voluntary arrangements with its creditors to step away from its debts. The company had run up substantial losses, had not paid suppliers and had not filed accounts. Nearly all staff were laid off and

980-525: Was a founder member of both the European Venture Capital Association (now "Invest Europe") and British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association ("BVCA") in 1983 having organised its first management buyout (for Ansafone ) in 1980. Early investments included Williams Holdings – owner of Chubb and Kidde – founded by Nigel Rudd and Brian McGowan , Shanks & McEwan, National Express and Bloomsbury Publishing . The turn of

1015-417: Was appointed as Chief Executive but there was no improvement in the company's fortunes or significant change in strategic direction. One significant asset remaining, Filetab , was transferred in 2009 to a new company called NCC Filetab whose managing director was also managing director of NCC. With losses and the size of the pension fund deficit increasing, the company was unable to meet its obligations and

1050-463: Was founded on 10 June 1966 by the Labour government, as an autonomous not-for-profit organisation, in order to be the "voice of the computer user", encourage the growth of computer usage in the UK and ensure that the necessary education and training was made available. NCC was one of the visible outcomes from Harold Wilson 's " White Heat of Technology " speech and the formation of a Ministry of Technology ,

1085-547: Was liquidated in 2010, Redholt Limited changed its name to the National Computing Centre Limited ( NCC Ltd ) and acquired the assets of the original NCC through a pre-pack administration arrangement . This new for-profit company, formed in 2010, initially offered some of the same services as the original NCC but in 2012 became a shell company as it had to file for protection from its creditors and make most of its staff redundant. The National Computing Centre

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1120-470: 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

1155-405: Was placed into administration by its management. In February 2010, NCC went into administration and ultimately liquidation. The few remaining assets and intellectual property rights were transferred in a "pre-pack" administration arrangement to Redholt Ltd a new private company, thus distancing the new company from the NCC creditors, which included a substantial pension fund liability resulting in

1190-460: Was subsequently abandoned and .secure was assigned to a different applicant. In 2014 NCC Group acquired the right to operate the generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) .trust from Deutsche Post . National Computing Centre The National Computing Centre ( NCC ) was an independent not-for-profit membership and research organisation in the United Kingdom. After the original organisation

1225-787: Was the Computer Validation Service, which ran Validation testing for Fortran 77 and Pascal . These validation tests were issued in accordance with a reciprocal agreement with General Services Administration in the United States. In 1996, the National Computing Centre sold its overseas education business, NCC Education , to stave off a financial crisis that occurred when the company breached its borrowing limits. In 1999, it sold its commercial divisions (turnover of less than £10 million), which provided escrow, consultancy, system engineering services to its existing management team supported by ECI Ventures for £5 million. This new company

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