BigAir shareholders have given the greenlight to the company's acquisition by fellow publicly listed ICT company Superloop.
The 99.45 percent approval, which came at a scheme meeting today in Sydney, paves the way for the combined IT and telecommunications company to shake up the business broadband space. The deal faces one final approval this Friday from the courts.
The combination will create a major publicly listed ICT company with revenue heading toward $100 million and spanning a diverse range of services, everything from student wireless to data centre integration to pan-Asian interconnnection services.
Superloop owns a network of dark fibre, and the pairing will allow BigAir to swap out its current backhaul provider while also giving Superloop a fibre beachhead into 60-100 "key enterprise buildings".
Over recent years, BigAir has changed its revenue mix from primarily a telecommunications provider to a business leaning more heavily toward IT and managed services, thanks to the acquisitions of Sydney-headquarters channel players Oriel and Applaud. In 2015, cloud managed services first overtook fixed wireless and community broadband to become the biggest business unit.
After the completion of the deal, BigAir's managed services business will run as a separate organisation under the leadership of Jason Ashton, BigAir's chief executive and co-founder.
BigAir secured 50th place in this 2016 CRN Fast50, its last chance to enter with the pending acquisition. The company grew its revenue by 27.3 percent to hit $79.7 million for the 2016 financial year.
Update: a previous version of this story said the combined entity would have a revenue of $86 million. The revenue will be materially higher post-merger.
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