NorthEdge Capital has backed the management buyout of ITC Luxury Travel. The firm has invested for a majority stake to support CEO Jen Atkinson and her senior team to deliver on planned investment in IT, management, staff, product and customer service.

Specialising in luxury tailor made holidays worldwide since 1974, Chester-based ITC Luxury Travel is one of the UK’s largest independent luxury tour operators and recently featured in BBC documentary, “The Millionaires Holiday Club”, covering luxury holidays to Barbados, Jamaica and India. ITC was the first travel company to charter Concorde and has a team of 60 travel specialists with an outstanding reputation for customer service. The business is on track to make 13,000 bookings this year and is expected to carry 32,000 passengers to 106 countries across the globe.

ITC employs 200 staff and is led by Jen Atkinson, who became CEO in 2009. The company reported turnover of £80m in the year to April 2016 – up from £43m in 2013. This was aided by the acquisition of Western & Oriental in June 2015, which expanded the core luxury beach offering and developed Group-wide expertise in experiential holidays.

The Strategy Exchange acted as ‘Industry Due Diligence’ advisors. Directors James Jennings and Chris Bentley lead the global travel industry’s most experienced corporate development team.  They provided deep insight into ITC, its competitive environment and its development pathways, and enabled the buy-side team to demonstrate sector credibility, contributing strongly to NorthEdge’s competitive advantage in the bidding process.

TSE also helped EY Corporate Finance to build and test their valuation and exit framework. They contributed deep sector expertise to the CDD team throughout their engagement, and, in particular, they enabled NorthEdge to deal pragmatically with due diligence issues as they arose.