Europe UK : Acision was selected for inclusion into The Sunday Times Top Track 250 annual league table, just four months after its launch. Now in its third year, the league table ranks Britain’s biggest mid-market private companies by latest sales. Acision reached 74th position, above brands such as Lotus, Travelodge, McLaren, Virgin Active, Chelsea Football Club and Manchester United.

Reading-based Acision was formed in June this year following the purchase of LogicaCMG’s Telecoms Products division for £265m (US $525m) by a consortium led by Atlantic Bridge and Access Industries. The company provides messaging and charging technology for mobile network operators, service providers and broadband operators. With a long heritage of market leadership, Acision’s systems currently process over half of the text messages sent in the world every day. The company employs approximately 1,700 people in 22 countries across six continents.

The Sunday Times HSBC Top Track 250 annual league table is compiled by Oxford-based research company Fast Track. It complements The Sunday Times Top Track 100 of Britain’s biggest private companies, and lists the next 101 to 350 biggest firms according to sales.

Jayne Chace, Acision’s CMO commented on the league table: “Acision launched as a half-billion dollar start up, and our inclusion in The Sunday Times Top Track 250 so soon demonstrates the might of the company. I don’t expect Chelsea Football Club is used to tabling lower than league newcomers but we have a powerful global presence and our customer’s include all tier one mobile operators around the world. With the convergence of the mobile and broadband industries our market potential has widened and we have ambitious plans for Acision in the coming years.”

Alice James, Senior Research Manager at Fast Track added: "The unquoted mid-market has great attraction for private-equity houses, which have poured billions into this market this year. Profitability within the mid-market is a big draw for investors. The Top 250 league table illustrates just how diverse and far-reaching Britain’s mid-market businesses have become as they adapt to changing times. Regardless of their ownership or industry, the Top Track 250 illustrates that Britain’s private mid-market businesses can move with the times to grow and remain strong."

The right honourable Gordon Brown, UK Prime Minister has commented: “Fast Track has moved from being a really good idea, to being one of the great British institutions sponsoring enterprise.”

Acision’s catalogue of achievements include:

• Pioneering SMS, a technology for which Acision continues to lead the market (Informa)
• Processing over half of the world’s text and multimedia messages every day (Informa)
• Serving three out of four videomail users globally (Portio Research) 
• Monetising over US$100 billion for network operators and service providers through its content and messaging charging systems
• Masterminding the first real time subscriber behavioural analysis for management decision making 
• Enabling TV show American Idol to interact with a record breaking 60 million voters, generating revenues and additional content sales
• Processing over 18 billion text messages globally on New Years Day 2007 – a record number
• Delivering the world’s first 3G mobile messaging platform