Olive is one of a handful of strategic Vodafone Platinum Partners, managing in excess of 65,000 subscribers across 2,500 customers. In acquiring fellow Vodafone Platinum Partner Wish, the Olive subscriber base grows to over 110,000 with 6,000 customers. Olive is now one of the largest independent providers of managed business communication services in the UK, employing around 150 staff with an estimated combined annual turnover in excess of £25m.
Two of the Wish shareholding directors join the Olive management team. Mike Hallam, (previously MD of Wish) joins the Olive Group as Chief Operating Officer, reporting to Olive Chief Executive Martin Flick. Simon Pickering, Wish Operations Director becomes Group Professional Services Director. Both become shareholders in the enlarged business.
Martin Flick, CEO of the Group says, “This, our ninth acquisition in two years, plays a significant role in our growth strategy. This powerful alignment of Vodafone Platinum Partners delivers benefits beyond the sum of its parts. The united team brings together leaders in their respective fields.
“By combining the two businesses we create huge benefit for our customers, suppliers and staff. Our Group now has an even broader range of services to offer including Mobility Solutions, IPVPN and Hosted Voice, PBX Maintenance, WAN and Cloud based services, all of which can be delivered as integrated solutions and managed in house by our expert teams.”
Olive Chairman Mark Geraghty adds, “Olive is now even better placed to tick all the boxes for business users working for UK based organisations that need remote and flexible working conditions for their staff, which are provided by our collaboration tools and expertise in mobile working.”
Mike Hallam, Chief Operating Officer of Olive Group says, “This is an exciting opportunity for our team. Having built our business steadily since 2006 we feel proud of what we have achieved. The skills we have developed have proven to be highly valuable and much sought after. Olive has a very exciting portfolio, fantastic corporate customers and a highly experienced management team, which Simon and I are delighted to join. The career opportunities and increased development potential for staff is enormous, and the business plan for the future is very compelling.”
Flick concludes “Olive has an intense focus on customer satisfaction as well as an obsession in providing innovative solutions that deliver tangible value to our customers. Having such a similar ethos and culture was crucial to our decision to acquire Wish. Olive is now one of Vodafone’s largest and most significant strategic partners and this acquisition affords us the capability to take full advantage of the growing Vodafone portfolio and their vision in providing truly converged network solutions. Vodafone is very supportive of the deal.”
Rob Mukherjee, Head of Vodafone Partner Services added, “ This is an exciting acquisition within the Vodafone Platinum partner community. As we continue to strengthen our position in the total communications market our hope is that partners develop their own capability in line with our plans and in making this acquisition Olive are demonstrating their commitment to our long term strategy.”