Exertis UK’s failure a case of ‘no credit where it’s due’
“Please note that Martin Armstrong and Andrew Bailey of Turpin Barker Armstrong, together with James Hopkirk of Kreston Reeves, were appointed as joint administrators of Exertis (UK) Ltd on 29 May 2026. The affairs, business and property of Exertis (UK) Ltd are being managed by the joint administrators, who act as agents of the company and contract without personal liability.”
And with that notice at the top of the exertis.co.uk website, the company’s story has effectively come to an end, less than a year after it was sold as part of DCC Technology’s infotech distribution business to Aurelius Private Equity Mid-Market Buyout, in a deal worth £100 million (€116 million).
At the time of the acquisition, Aurelius claimed there was “significant earnings growth potential for the business, with infrastructure and processes already in place to deliver it”. Andrzej Cebrat, managing director Aurelius IV and V, stated that “Exertis in the UK and Ireland ticks all of Aurelius’ boxes: with £2 billion in annual revenues, it is an attractive size, and it offers significant operational improvement potential.”
The investment group planned to deploy its WaterRise team of specialists “to support a return to operational excellence and growth” along with its ability to draw on “hundreds of years of collective professional experience with over 100 ‘operational playbooks’ to draw on”, so it would not have to “reinvent the wheel each time we work with a portfolio company, but rather bring this highly valuable experience to bear”.
Consultation and decline
So what happened? Why was it that, despite all that experience and the team of specialists, Exertis UK didn’t rise? The cracks weren’t long in emerging. By Christmas, eight executives had left the business, including CEO Tim Griffin. After a 45-day consultation, 400 staff were made redundant in January. Others had already left the company and 200 were affected by the sale of the Exertis Supplies unit to evo in the same month. The AV business closed down in March.
When a second consultation process began in March, around 200 employees were left at the company, out of a total of 1,200 in July 2025.
Commenting on the appointment of administrators, UK distribution veteran Alex Tatham told IT Channel Oxygen: “I feel particularly sorry for the employees who worked hard to make Exertis a great place to work. However, a distributor has to make profit and generate cash. It’s surprising that it did not over a sustained period, leading to this inevitable demise.”
In a post on LinkedIn, UK channel veteran Nigel Dunn put his finger on one possible reason for that failure, highlighting the effect of credit insurance on the demise of Exertis UK. “The single variable that made recovery almost impossible,” he wrote, “was one that could not easily be surfaced in due diligence: credit insurance.” He argued that while insurers were happy to extend cover when DCC, a FTSE 100 group company, stood behind Exertis UK, the moment Aurelius “announced its acquisition in July 2025, insurers began reassessing. By December 2025, cover had effectively collapsed.”
Despite Aurelius’ belief it could turn around the business, it could not have fully modelled the effect on Exertis UK’s credit standing of the acquisition announcement.
This is a very important point which does not appear to have been much remarked upon in the coverage of Exertis UK. As Dunn states: “Credit insurance is load-bearing infrastructure in distribution. It is not a line item, it is the mechanism that makes the entire supply chain operate. Any acquisition of a distributor must model what happens to credit cover under new ownership, not just under the existing parent.”
The good news in Ireland is that the credit standing of Exertis Ireland has not been affected in the same way. “We are and always have been, disconnected from the UK business,” says Christine Lynn, head of comms at Exertis Ireland. “We both operated as separate businesses. Exertis Ireland is trading really well and thankfully, there is no negative impact.”
In the case of Exertis UK, however, I guess this one instance where we can say it’s a case of “no credit where it’s not due”.
Subscribers 0
Fans 0
Followers 0
Followers