Congratulations are in order to 35 year old Matthew Riley, who is set to pick up around £80m in cash and shares after reversing his telecoms company Daisy into Aim-listed Freedom4 (formerly Pipex).
Riley set up Daisy in 2001 to supply telecoms services to small and medium sized businesses, and in 2007 he won the Bank of Scotland entrepreneur challenge, which entailed a £5m interest free loan and mentoring from none other than retail guru Sir Philip Green.
Now Daisy is joining Aim via Freedom4 - whose chairman will remain Pipex boss Peter Dubens. As part of the deal Riley will receive nearly £30m in cash and £51m in shares. He becomes chief executive of the enlarged group.
Freedom4 is also buying Vialtus, a supplier of voice and data services, for around £42m. Vialtus is linked with private equity group Oakley, which is also associated with Peter Dubens, although the company said he took no part in deciding whether or not Freedom4 should buy Vialtus.
Freedom4 is paying for the deal by issuing shares at 80p each to the vendors, as well as placing shares in the market to raise £83m in cash.
Freedom4 is currently 0.94p higher at 4.04p. It is also planning a 20 for 1 share consolidation, hence the seeming discrepency between the placing price and the market price.
