Twin brothers Andy and Chris McLaughlin have completed an MBO of a Cheshire-based software firm.
MIS Group has been bought from the brothers’ father, company founder Stewart McLaughlin, by means of a four-year deferred consideration for a near eight-figure sum.
The deal includes housing management software vendor MIS-AMS and MIS Emergency Systems, one of the UK’s primary suppliers of ambulance command and control systems.
The group, which grew turnover from £8.7 million in 2017 to £9.2m in 2018, has 92 employees based in its offices on the Gadbrook Retail Park in Northwich.
Its revenue is evenly split across the existing companies – 52% MIS AMS and 48% Emergency Systems.
“It’s very much business as usual – I joined the group 18 months ago as FD and Chris has been managing director of MIS-AMS for the past five years where he has grown revenues 47% in that time, putting processes in place for growth and expanding the workforce by 60%,” said Andy McLaughlin, group FD, MIS Group.
“There will be no change to the group structure – we are in excellent shape with plans for further growth to over 100 employees before the year is out and future expansion plans entailing investment into the local area and more jobs in the coming year.”
The brothers have launched a third company, Incline-IT, an IT managed service business that will complement MIS-AMS’s ActiveH housing management software (HMS).
“Many of MIS-AMS’s housing association customers tell us that they’re increasingly looking for ways to outsource the hosting of their HMS to become more efficient and reduce costs,” said Chris McLaughlin, managing director, MIS-AMS.
“MIS-AMS manages many of the UK’s housing associations’ core software product – ActiveH, so it’s a natural step for Incline-IT to manage their IT estates more widely. It will provide a way to remove the cost and headache of hosting systems for many of our existing customers and it makes sense to bring it to life now.”
Stewart McLaughlin retired from day-to-day business in April but has remained in his role as chairman attending quarterly board meetings.
