The Delivery Group Acquired by Management

The Delivery Group, comprising of Secured Mail and CMS, is pleased to announce that three directors of the Group have acquired the majority interest in the Company from the other shareholders.

Led by Steve Stokes, James Wilkins and Paul Carvell the deal was made possible following the successful sale by TDG of its international e-commerce logistics business, P2P, to FedEx Corporation in March 2018.

Steve Stokes will become Group CEO, James Wilkins moves up to Managing Director of Secured Mail, and the current Sales Director at CMS, Mark Calladine, will become its Managing Director. Paul Carvell will continue as Executive Chairman, and Mark Bigley will remain as a Non-Executive Director and consultant to the Group.

Additionally, Ian Brewer will join the team as Group CFO; Ian was the former CFO at parcels company Tuffnells, and was part of the successful team that sold the business to Connect Plc in 2014.

Commenting on the deal, Steve Stokes said:
“I’m delighted to have the opportunity to lead The Delivery Group into the next chapter of its development, building on its strong financial performance, excellent growth prospects, and working with the tremendous teams across the business. We look forward to developing new services for our loyal customers and have exciting plans to enter new markets that will further confirm our position as the specialist mail and e commerce provider of choice.”

Paul Carvell added:
“We are equally delighted that our former majority shareholder Next Wave Partners LLP, have chosen to remain as an investor in The Delivery Group, and we thank them for their support on the journey as we grew from £32 million revenues in 2011 to £250 million in 2017. Next Wave funded a major depot consolidation, an operational automation programme and significant software developments to further improve the customer experience.”

The Management Buy-Out team were advised by BDO and Stephens Scown LLP on the transaction and Next Wave and the vendor shareholders were advised by Hill Dickinson and PWC Corporate Finance.

For further information, please contact: Paul Carvell, Chairman: paul.carvell@thedeliverygroup.co.uk