Osborne Clarke advises Clevedon-based Glide Group on its sale to Alinda Capital Partners

Lawyers at international legal practice Osborne Clarke have acted for the management team of Clevedon-based Glide Group on its sale by Inflexion Private Equity Partners to Alinda Capital Partners.

Glide is the UK’s leading provider of infrastructure for difficult to serve markets such as high-density accommodation and urban edge business parks. The sale to US infrastructure investor Alinda Capital, follows a six-year period of transformational growth for the business, during which it became the clear UK market leader through its partnership with Inflexion.

Glide designs, installs and manages fibre networks required to deliver broadband connectivity together with other critical products and services to student accommodation, the private rental sector and small and medium sized enterprises. Inflexion’s investment has helped the company to build the UK’s leading fibre network in this specialist market reaching 100,000 premises and approximately 250,000 customers.

The Osborne Clarke team was led by partners Mike Freer and Mark Spinner, supported by Busayo Yusuff (private equity), Claire Bowles and Isobel Turner (both employment).

Tim Pilcher, CEO of Glide said: “We were thrilled with the outcome of the transaction. Mike and Mark provided great, pragmatic advice, using their experience to focus on the issues that really mattered to me and my team. It was an absolute pleasure working with the whole Osborne Clarke team throughout the process.”

Osborne Clarke’s corporate team is the go-to practice for many companies in the tech, media and communications sectors, working with global businesses through to fast-growth start-ups and market challengers. 

The team advises at every stage of company development across all corporate issues, from equity and debt fundraisings to M&A, IPOs and JVs. In particular, Osborne Clarke’s management advisory group is one of the leading teams focussed on advising management teams through private equity transactions. In 2019, the team advised management teams on over £5.3 billion of private equity transactions.