Taylor Wessing has advised Inflexion Private Equity on the buyout of Virgin Experience Days, the UK’s leading experiences business.

Virgin Experience Days offers personalised experiences to consumers and corporates from flying Spitfires to short luxury breaks, selling over 750,000 experiences annually. A high growth business, revenue doubled to £50m in three years, driven by a seamless tech-enabled customer experience and the ongoing consumer shift to sharing experiences over tangible goods.

As part of the buyout, Inflexion introduced leisure sector expert, Simon McMurtrie, as Chairman and the highly experienced Commercial Director, Matthew Briggs. Both will work alongside CEO Paul O’Brien who has led the business for over a decade. Inflexion will work closely with this team to create long-term sustainable growth. Capitalising on our international reach, we will help accelerate sales into new markets with growing demand for personalised experiences, and support the re-launch of Virgin Incentives in the multi-billion pound employee rewards and recognition market. Inflexion’s digital expertise will also help advance the company’s digital marketing strategy.

Private Equity partner, James Goold, led the transaction with the support of senior associate Jonny Bethell and associates Catherine Williams and Jerome Kennedy.

Tim Smallbone, Head of the Enterprise Fund at Inflexion, commented: “This is the third investment from our Enterprise Fund and we’re hugely excited about the opportunities for growth within the business. It was great to work with the Taylor Wessing team on another successful transaction.“

James Goold said: “We are very pleased to have helped Inflexion with this transaction which will see Virgin Experience Days expand further. We look forward to watching the business go from strength to strength with this new partnership.”

Earlier this year, Taylor Wessing advised Inflexion on its Partnership Capital investment in K2 Partnering Solutions, the global resourcing specialist which provides outsourced IT consultants to multinational corporations including leading technology firms in Silicon Valley. The firm has previously represented Inflexion on a number of other transactions, including the buyouts of Cablecom and CMO and the exits by way of IPO of FDM Group and On the Beach.