OakNorth Bank – the UK bank for entrepreneurs, by entrepreneurs – has provided a £19M loan to Sullivan Street Partners, to fund the acquisition of Osborne Infrastructure.

Part of Geoffrey Osborne Group, a family-owned business founded in 1966, Osborne Infrastructure is a leading Tier 1 civil engineering and transport infrastructure business, with core geographies in London, the South-East & Midlands. Its services range from minor maintenance works to the delivery of flagship infrastructure projects. As a highly agile and innovative business with a focus on Rail and Highways it has built strong and longstanding relationships of over 35 years with key clients, including: Network Rail, National Highways, Connect Plus and Transport for London. 

Under the leadership of Managing Director John Dowsett, the business has seen revenue growth at a CAGR of 10% since his appointment in 2015. It is exceptionally well placed to continue this growth and help deliver the significant planned expansion of and investment into the UK transport infrastructure.

Sullivan Street was founded in 2010 by Layton Tamberlin and Richard Sanders to take an operationally intensive approach to complex situations in the UK lower mid-market. Within this strategy corporate carve-outs are a specific focus with five such acquisitions having been completed to date. Sullivan Street has been closely following the UK infrastructure space given the prevailing macro tailwinds and Osborne Infrastructure represented a highly attractive platform which necessitated an operationally involved approach to the carve-out from its parent. Sullivan Street will support and augment the management team to deliver their growth plan to take the business to be a leading, multidisciplinary, innovative partner for critical infrastructure projects across the UK.

Layton Tamberlin, Founding Partner of Sullivan Street, said: “We are thrilled to have acquired a business with as good a reputation and standing with its customers as Osborne Infrastructure. We look forward to supporting the management team as Osborne enters its next chapter as an independent business. The team at OakNorth demonstrated a highly efficient and pragmatic approach from start to finish, they had a clear understanding of our objectives and were able to move within very tight time constraints to execute the transaction.”

Stewart Haworth, Debt Finance Director at OakNorth Bank, commented: “For over 40 years, Osborne Infrastructure has been supporting the UK transport infrastructure sector and this deep-rooted expertise, coupled with its long-standing relationships, has enabled it to build a strong business that has proven to be cyclically resilient. The infrastructure investments announced in the 2020 Spending Review last November came as welcome news to the sector, and with the support of Sullivan Street, Osborne Infrastructure is now in a prime position to capitalise on this. We’ve thoroughly enjoyed working with Layton, Richard and Oliver who all have specialist expertise in complex carve-out transactions, and are grateful to our advisors at Squire Patton Boggs and Deloitte for their support.”