News

TalkTalk Group to acquire Virtual1

TalkTalk Group has announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Virtual1. TalkTalk Group said Virtual1 presents an exciting opportunity to increase scale as a national provider of Ethernet solutions and to strengthen its capabilities and market position. TalkTalk Group and Virtual1 have a combined EAD market share of 25 per cent.

Virtual1 CEO and founder Tom O’Hagan will continue to lead the standalone business of 200 people as part of the TalkTalk Group. TalkTalk said the increased scale and enhanced capabilities will further strengthen its wholesale platform offering.

Tristia Harrison, CEO, TalkTalk (pictured), said, “Since taking the company private in February 2021 we have looked to invest to strengthen both our B2B and wholesale platforms. As all businesses continue to experience increasing demands for high bandwidth services, we see huge benefits in acquiring Virtual1 coupling our national scale network with their market-leading APIs and software capabilities. Tom O’Hagan and his excellent team will continue to lead the standalone business and we look forward to welcoming them to the TalkTalk family.”

Tom O’Hagan, founder and CEO, Virtual1, added, “Virtual1 has built an award-winning self-service portal and suite of APIs to enable businesses to virtually manage their networks with complete visibility of real-time bandwidth, reducing Partners manual intervention and cost, whilst improving the customer experience. We’re delighted to be able to expand the reach of our solutions and increase our scale as a network provider with TalkTalk.”

Lazard & Co acted as financial advisor to TalkTalk, with Arma Partners acting as financial advisor to Virtual1 alongside Latham & Watkins as legal advisor.