Former ICT Company of the Year winner Espion, which employs 80 people in its corporate information consultancy, has been acquired by international business standards firm BSI for an undisclosed amount.

Espion’s Irish and UK operations are included in the deal, which will see Espion become an operating subsidiary of BSI’s professional services business and will function under the name ‘Espion – A BSI Professional Services Company’.

Espion specialises in information management and security services including information governance, risk and compliance, R&D, eDiscovery and digital forensics, with clients in the UK and the rest of Europe.

The acquisition of Espion expands BSI’s professional services business which has grown globally following recent acquisitions in the US.

Mark Basham of BSI said: “As the business world is increasingly conducted digitally, so too has the issue of information resilience risen up the boardroom agenda.  Digital transformation within business has intensified the complex security issues and threats organisations face.  This acquisition of Espion expands our information management and security proposition, enabling us to deliver the right solutions, that have a positive impact and help embed excellence, increasing the resilience of the client’s information systems and processes.”

In Association with

Information Resilience

Espion boss Colman Morrissey, who is remaining with the firm along with other senior executives,  added: “Over the past few years, managing and securing corporate information has become highly complex owing to increased regulations, growth in the volume of data organisations are generating, as well as the evolving and sophisticated information risk environment.  We are very much looking forward to delivering our ambition to develop a global centre of excellence that is at the cutting edge of information resilience.  The global reach, resources and industry standing of BSI add tremendously to what we expect will be a very promising future.”

Espion Ltd booked a net loss of €132,000 in 2014. Year-end trade debtors stood at €2.7 million and total liabilities amounted to €3.5 million. Net worth at 31 December 2014 was €402,000.

The main shareholders in the parent company, Espion Group Ltd, are directors Colman Morrissey (63%), Jim Lehane (22%) and Colm Murphy (11%). This company's net worth at end 2014 was €1.1 million, according to auditors Deloitte.

BSI operates in 30 countries and has over 2,000 clients in Ireland as well as 80,000 globally.  BSI had turnover of £287m in 2014 and made an operating profit of £30.7m. Net worth at 31 December 2014 was £56.5m.

In November 2015, the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission cleared DCC plc’s acquisition of Espion Distribution Limited.

The purchase was effected through DCC subsidiary Exertis Ireland. Espion Distribution was a distributor of IT hardware and software), specialising in IT security and networking products in the areas of security, storage and virtualisation, networking and wireless technologies.

Photo: Colman Morrissey (left) and Espion director Colm Murphy. (Pic: Maxwell Photography)