Speechly Bircham has acted as the legal adviser to SMS Systems Maintenance Services Inc, an investee company of US private equity house Thomas H. Lee Partners, L.P. on its acquisition of Exquip Network Services Limited (trading as Olympic Support), a leading independent provider of multi-vendor enterprise support to the IT community.

Founded in 1981 and based in Charlotte, NC USA, SMS is a leading global provider of multivendor IT asset lifecycle services and support solutions. SMS supports more than 3,000 clients globally with direct locations across North America, Asia and Europe. SMS's solutions include support for most datacenter brands including Cisco, IBM, HP, Dell, Oracle, EMC, Hitachi, NetApp, Lexmark and Xerox.

"Olympic represents SMS's first direct investment in the European market and represents a significant step towards executing our strategy of becoming the globally preferred IT asset maintenance and lifecycle services provider," said John Wozniak of SMS Systems Maintenance Services Inc.

Commenting on the transaction, Malcolm MacDougall, partner at Speechly Bircham, said: "It was a pleasure to work with SMS on this transaction, which is their first investment in the United Kingdom.  We look forward to working with SMS on matters as they expand their presence in the UK".

The Speechlys team was led by private equity partner Malcolm MacDougall and private equity senior assistant David Coates, alongside private equity trainee Anisha Nair, tax assistant Robert Birchall and employment assistant Adam Partington.

http://www.speechlys.com/news/news/current-news/2013/03/speechly-bircha…