Partners Group among suitors for £1.5bn accountancy firm Azets

A Swiss-based private equity investor is among the suitors circling a fast-growing accountancy firm founded by the former boss of Deloitte's UK operations.

Sky News understands that Partners Group is in talks to buy a controlling stake in Azets, one of the UK's top 10 accountants by revenue.

Partners is understood to be one of several bidders which have made it through to the second round of an auction being run by bankers at JP Morgan.

However, John Connolly, Azets' founder, is understood to have dropped out of the process after a bid he was working on with the buyout firm Towerbrook Capital Partners failed to progress.

Mr Connolly, the former chief executive of Deloitte UK, founded Cogital Group, which later became Azets, in 2016, but stepped down following an earlier sale process in 2019.

He also chairs the TowerBrook-backed US accounting firm Eisner Advisory Group, and previously chaired the FTSE-100 companies Amec Foster Wheeler and G4S.

The current auction of Azets, which is majority-owned by Hg, is also said to have seen interest from Apax Partners and PAI Partners, according to market sources.

Azets claims to be the largest provider of business-critical services such as accounting work, payroll and tax to small and medium-sized businesses in northern Europe.

In total, it boasts more than 100,000 SME customers.

The company trades under a number of brands, including Blick Rothenberg, which formed part of a 2016 merger that saw Hg become a shareholder in the business.

Since then, it has made a string of acquisitions to bolster its presence in several countries.

On Thursday, it announced the acquisition of Naylor Wintersgill, a Yorkshire-based accountancy and business advisory practice.

The deal was Azets' 11th in a year.

The group's rebranding under the Azets name took place in 2020.

None of those involved in the process would comment.