UKFast appoints Catherine Greening as CFO

British cloud firm UKFast has appointed Catherine Greening as chief financial officer as the firm embarks on an ambitious five-year growth plan.

The move comes as part of the expansion plans linked to the recent investment from Inflexion Private Equity.

Greening, who joined UKFast five years ago as M&A director, played an important role in the recent deal with Inflexion alongside GCA Altium which saw UKFast valued at £405m.

Since joining in 2013, Greening has been closely involved in the development of UKFast and its related companies, including the acquisitions of penetration testing specialist, Pentest Ltd, and of public sector cloud and cybersecurity business Secure Information Assurance (S-IA), now UKFast Public Sector.

With more than 18 years’ experience in the M&A and private equity industries prior to joining UKFast, qualified Chartered Accountant Greening has worked for heavyweights including PwC and mid-market private equity house, LDC.

“As M&A director, I was more focussed on one-off projects designed to add value, such as the acquisition of S-IA. The move to CFO sees me far more involved in the day-to-day operations of UKFast, working more closely with the other directors to drive business performance,” said Greening.

“The timing wasn’t right at the end of 2018 for an IPO. However, with Inflexion as business partners that still remains a viable option for the future. I’m also excited to see how ClearCloud and Public Sector develop throughout 2019, with both having incredibly strong pipelines.

“The culture and energy at UKFast is unique and totally different to anything I’ve experienced before, which all stems from the way [founders] Lawrence and Gail [Jones] run the business. For a CFO, the mix of high sales growth and strong cashflow is hugely attractive. UKFast is a business that constantly evolves and leads the market, making it an exciting place to work.”

UKFast CEO Lawrence Jones MBE, added: “Since setting up UKFast nearly 20 years ago, there have been some clear areas of investment and growth. The past few years our focus has been very much around expanding our R&D team, building products and investing in infrastructure for the future.

“Our plan for 2019 and beyond is to look at ways to capitalise on our investment. Catherine and her team are well placed to help us accelerate our growth. I am hugely excited by the future, particularly the wealth of opportunities we uncovered during our due diligence.”

UKFast has a customer base of 5,500 UK SME clients and 200 mid-sized companies, which are served by UKFast’s 350 employees across its Manchester campus, London sales office and data centres.

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