Manchester-headquartered software firm bought by defence tech group for £25 million

Listed defence specialist QinetiQ has made purchase of a Greater Manchester-headquartered software development and data analytics company Naimuri.

The deal was worth £25 million for the company that provides cloud-based services and technology to the UK Intelligence and law enforcement communities.

Employing 70 staff from its head office in Salford, the company expects revenues of more than £9 million and EBITDA of about £2 million to 31 July 2020.

QinetiQ – which already partners with Naimuri on several programmes – is behind the takeover and has promised to “invest and build upon” its existing capabilities in data analytics, data intelligence and software development.

QinetiQ was formed in July 2001, when the Ministry of Defence split its Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) in two. The smaller portion of DERA, was rebranded Dstl (Defence Science & Technology Laboratory).

Momentum Corporate Finance and Hill Dickinson both worked on the deal.

The larger part of DERA, including most of the non-nuclear testing and evaluation establishments, was renamed QinetiQ and prepared for privatisation. QinetiQ became a public-private partnership in 2002 with the purchase of a stake by US-based private equity company the Carlyle Group.