• Acuity advises Spring Fibre on its £155 million funding from River and Mercantile

    INVESTMENT

Investment specialist River and Mercantile (“R&M”) to invest up to £155 million to support the rollout of Spring Fibre’s ultrafast full fibre broadband network across England.

Spring Fibre Investment

Well known as a provider of listed equity investment funds, R&M’s Infrastructure investment business was established in 2021 with the appointment of Aviva Investors’ former Head of Infrastructure Equity, Ian Berry, along with his team, also from Aviva.

R&M’s Infrastructure fund invests in long-life income generating assets with outstanding ESG credentials. The fund targets investments in assets related to energy transition or digital transition.

Spring Fibre was founded in 2019 by an experienced industry management team, Kingsley Capital Partners (backed by family offices and known for its creation of new companies) and telecoms specialist Graphite Strategy. It aims to deliver multi-gigabit capable full fibre-optic infrastructure across England, giving residential and commercial customers next generation access to the internet. Spring Fibre, led by CEO, Ros Singleton, will deploy the company’s network on a wholesale basis, empowering a range of Internet Service Providers to offer connectivity solutions which will cater for all users’ needs.

Through its partnership with R&M, Spring Fibre’s plans are to create a network rising to more than 1 million premises passed over time. Spring Fibre targets areas with poor internet provision and will deliver a major boost to many under-served communities and businesses.

Ian Berry, Head of Infrastructure at River and Mercantile said:

“As in many countries, we continue to see growing demand for better and faster access to data across the UK. However, the provision of infrastructure is often skewed to larger cities, meaning that many areas of the country remain under-served to the detriment of the people that live, work or operate businesses there. In helping to solve this problem, Spring Fibre’s network will make a significant positive societal impact. From an investment perspective, we consider data infrastructure is a critical asset and investments such as this help us provide reliable, long term income to our clients.”

Neil Mahapatra, Managing Partner at Kingsley Capital Partners said:

“It’s been great working with Acuity on this fundraise – we have found Marcus and his team to be highly professional and knowledgeable about the fibre space, and very responsive at all times.”

Marcus Allchurch, Managing Partner at Acuity Advisors said:

“It has been a pleasure working with Ros, the exceptional Spring Fibre team, and Kingsley Capital Partners to secure this fantastic funding package for the business. With significant experience building telecoms networks, the team have been great to work with and I am confident that they will enjoy considerable success as they execute their plan over the coming years.”

Spring Fibre

“It’s been great working with Acuity on this fundraise – we have found Marcus and his team to be highly professional and knowledgeable about the fibre space, and very responsive at all times”

NEIL MAHAPATRA | MANAGING PARTNER
Kingsley Capital Partners

Team Members

THOUGHTFUL SUB HEADLINE GOES HERE.

Marcus joined Acuity in 2014, before which he held senior leadership and corporate finance positions with some of the UK’s most successful advisory and telecoms businesses. Roles with EE, KPMG Corporate Finance and BDO Corporate Finance have seen Marcus work in the UK and across the globe with successful entrepreneurs seeking exit, and at board level with multi-national corporates looking for growth through organic and inorganic investment.

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