International law firm Olswang has advised Allenby Capital Limited, nominated adviser to RapidCloud International Plc, on the admission of RapidCloud's shares to trading on AIM at a market capitalisation of £10 million. The float was conducted for the purpose of raising £1 million for expansion of RapidCloud International Plc into Indonesia. The shares opened at 54p and closed up some 30% at the end of the first day of trading at 69.5p

Founded in 1999, RapidCloud grew to having a base of over 36,500 customers from small and medium sized enterprises, government agencies, multi-national corporations and large scale enterprises, such as Deloitte, BAE Systems, Canon, AmAssurance, AmBank, the Securities Commission of Malaysia and the Companies Commission of Malaysia.

RapidCloud and its cloud computing business is part of the Malaysian Economic Transformation Programme (ETP). The Government of Malaysia regards cloud computing as one of the key drivers for socio-economic growth and as such has included it in several Government plans and programmes, such as the 10th Malaysia Plan ETP, MSC Malaysia Cloud Initiatives for SMEs and the National Broadband Initiative to increase national broadband penetration rates.

"We at Olswang are continuing to develop our offering in the Asian market where we have a great deal of relevant expertise and capability" said Azlinda Ariffin-Boromand, Partner. "We seized the opportunity to act on this interesting transaction and demonstrate our knowledge and capability in completing, in 4 months, one of the few successful AIM IPOs in the difficult current market. With the cloud computing industry in Asia Pacific expected to grow at almost a 50% rate and to give revenues in the region of US$5.6 billion by 2015, we can see how RapidCloud is going to continue to thrive and pay dividends to its investors."

Olswang was approached by Allenby to advise on the transaction due to the firm's in-depth understanding of the IT business sector and Malaysian business culture including government policies. The Olswang team was led by Partner Azlinda Ariffin-Boromand, who was supported by associates Julian Ciecierski-Burns and Alex Dixie.