LDC Appoints Daniel Sasaki as Managing Director of its London Team

LONDON, January 17, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

- LDC London Completes First 2011 Deal With the Acquisition of a Majority Stake in Sala International

LDC, the leading regional mid-market private equity house and private equity arm of Lloyds Banking Group, has appointed Daniel Sasaki as Managing Director of LDC London, its 10-strong investment team in the Capital.

He was previously a Director of the firm and joined LDC London in 2008, specialising in the TMT sector. Sasaki has made an outstanding contribution since joining and deals led by him helped LDC London achieve one of its most successful years to date in 2010. Sasaki takes over from Peter Brooks, who joined LDC London in 2007 and who had previously worked for the firm earlier in this career.

During his career so far at LDC London, Sasaki has led a number of significant transactions. Most recently, he led LDC's buyout of Easynet Global Services from BSkyB and directed the IBO of 1st -The Exchange.

These deals contributed strongly to LDC London's excellent performance in 2009 and 2010. Among the firm's other noteworthy transactions last year was the acquisition of a significant minority holding in outdoor specialist Mountain Warehouse in a deal valuing the business at over GBP50million.

LDC London has started 2011 strongly with its first deal completed last week, the acquisition of a majority stake, for GBP11.5 million, in Sala International, the UK's seventh largest document archiving and records storage business.

Founded in 1994, Sala International is a leader in records management, a fast-growing sector expanding at over 10% annually. In the UK the market is estimated to be worth around GBP6 billion, with the document storage market being worth circa GBP500 million in annual revenues.

As part of the deal, a new CEO, Tomas Gronager, will join to lead the senior management team. He has over 15 years senior executive experience internationally and was previously a Senior VP at ISS Facilities Services, one of the world's largest facility services providers.

Under his leadership the company plans more ambitious growth. The vision, backed by LDC, is to develop an Integrated Records Management ("IRM") outsourcing solution combining: Archiving (storage), Scan-on-demand / Software as a Service and Destruction.

Sala also plans acquisitions to bolster its destruction services, increase scale as well as to establish a greater national footprint for the full IRM offer in the UK.

    
    Contacts:

    Lucy Grimble & Richard Evans
    Tel:+44(0)20-7630-1411