Telio – the European market leader in technology and communications services for correctional facilities – is a long-standing customer of Carlsquare. The transaction marks the eighth collaboration with Telio. Most recently, Carlsquare advised Charterhouse Capital Partners on its investment in Telio.
Telio, the Hamburg-based service provider, was founded in 1998 to enable inmates in custody to stay in touch with their families and the outside world using secure communication technology. Today, with Oliver Drews (CEO and shareholder) from Hamburg at the helm, the company is a global market leader in the field of inmate communication. The company supports more than 650 correctional facilities in 22 countries with sophisticated media systems and inmate telephony. As a technical service provider, Telio is continuously working on process optimisations for the international prison system. In this way, Telio’s product portfolio continues to make a valuable contribution to improving all conditions and processes of a correctional facility and to the social rehabilitation of inmates.
Gerdes Communications GmbH (GCM) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Meckenheim-based Gerdes AG and, like Telio, specialises in telephony and digitalisation processes in the penal system. Telio’s current acquisition of GCM marks an important step in the expansion of the Hamburg-based company, which was founded 25 years ago.
With this step, Telio not only adds customers in existing markets, but also opens up access to another partner country. “We are pleased to be able to work for new correctional institutions in Germany, Switzerland, Luxembourg and, for the first time, in Finland,” explains Oliver Drews, CEO of the Telio Group.
Through the takeover, his company can further sharpen its technology focus on the penal system and further expand the digitalisation of correctional institutions initiated in Finland.
“The use of Gerdes hardware and software enables further optimisation of the Telio portfolio. Our global customers will now benefit even more from innovative technologies at a very attractive price-performance ratio,” Drews, who shapes the company’s future with the acquisition: “As Telio has not been active in Finland so far, the acquisition carries great weight for strategic reasons.”
Carlsquare acted as the exclusive financial advisor to Telio.
