UK2 Group Acquired by The Hut Group

The M & A activity in the hosting and domain markets continues. Earlier today it was announced that The Hut Group has acquired UK2.

The Hut Group isn’t in the hosting or domain name space directly, but as a global e-commerce company would be a big consumer of infrastructure to support its brands, which include Zavvi and IWOOT:

This represents a unique strategic opportunity for the Group to step-change the underlying cloud and security infrastructure that underpins the proprietary e-commerce technology platform which powers its ever-growing portfolio of high growth Health & Beauty brands. Specifically, UK2 provides THG with high performance infrastructure at a global scale, accelerating the platform’s ability to deliver extremely fast online experiences across the world. Additionally, UK2’s talent base increases the headcount of technology staff to over 600 across the Group.

The UK2 Group includes some well known brands such as UK2, 100TB, Midphase and VPS.net.

Does this acquisition mean that The Hut Group are trying to follow in Amazon’s footsteps?

Here’s the official announcement:

 THG FURTHER DEVELOPS ITS WORLD CLASS PROPRIETARY TECHNOLOGY PLATFORM AND TALENT

1,000 NEW TECHNOLOGY JOBS TO BE CREATED IN THE NEXT THREE YEARS

The Hut Group Limited (“THG”, or the “Group”), one of the world’s largest online Health and Beauty retailers and brand owners, announces the acquisition of UK-2 Limited (“UK2”) from its private equity owner, LDC.

This represents a unique strategic opportunity for the Group to step-change the underlying cloud and security infrastructure that underpins the proprietary e-commerce technology platform which powers its ever-growing portfolio of high growth Health & Beauty brands. Specifically, UK2 provides THG with high performance infrastructure at a global scale, accelerating the platform’s ability to deliver extremely fast online experiences across the world. Additionally, UK2’s talent base increases the headcount of technology staff to over 600 across the Group.

The Group will invest heavily behind the existing UK2 management team and their highly skilled employee base to support the growth of key brands such as 100TB, whilst offering UK2’s services to THG’s existing technology clients including DMGT plc, Nintendo, Unilever, Nectar, Honda, and Elizabeth Arden.

Matthew Moulding, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of The Hut Group said:
“This is a significant technology investment to support our growth plans and provide a world class proprietary ecommerce platform and infrastructure to increase capacity, speed and resilience for our global customer base. We are delighted to welcome UK2 and their highly skilled technology-based team of people to THG. The move will also see UK2 become a core part of our Technology proposition within the THG Platform Division, helping us achieve our ambition of becoming a world class platform for technology clients. We expect this to be the start of further significant investment in UK technology with a further 1,000 new technology jobs planned over the next three years.”

Established in 1998, UK2 operates seven industry leading brands including 100TB, providing high-performance and dedicated server and cloud services to an international client base of SME and enterprise level corporates coupled with data analytics, shared hosting and domain registration services. UK2 employs over 200 individuals across 26 global locations including London, US, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Singapore, Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, India and South Korea.

THG was advised on the acquisition by Ernst & Young and Bird & Bird.

In related news, apparently Web.com is in talks about being possibly acquired.