Zuckerberg quids in from UK tech sale

SILICON Valley tycoons including Mark Zuckerberg are in the money after their investment fund sold a British tech company.

Iconiq Capital – which invests on behalf of the Facebook founder as well other tech billionaires including Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman – sold North-West London-based CSL Group to the private equity firm ECI Partners for an undisclosed sum.

San Francisco- based Iconiq, along with Norland Capital and RIT Capital Partners, had owned CSL since 2016, when they backed a management buyout of the firm, which provides alarm signalling and monitoring systems.

Under Iconiq’s ownership, CSL has been a pioneer in the ‘ internet of things’, where machines

– in this case alarm systems and computers – communicate with one another. CSL, which has completed four takeovers since 2016, services more than a million devices across the UK, Ireland, Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands.

Iconiq is a notoriously secretive i n v e s t ment fund established by former Morgan Stanley bankers in 2011. Its early i nvestors were senior

Facebook executives, i ncluding Zuckerberg and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, who entrusted I coniq with their cash after the social media giant’s stock market listing in 2012.

CSL turned over £31 million in the year to March 2019, its latest accounts reveal. It made a pre-tax loss of £14.2 million, but said it made £9.6 million in underlying profit.