Lysanda has today announced its acquisition of Tracker Network, a wholly owned subsidiary of Direct Line Group. 

Lysanda is a leading telematics technology provider for fleet, insurance and OEM markets.

The acquisition, which brings together these two complementary businesses, will enable Tracker to grow its SVR (stolen vehicle recovery) services, whilst substantially expanding its fleet and insurance technology offering, supported by an ambitious owner with a common vision.

The two companies will form a new company called Tantalum, with approximately £20 million in revenues and some 500,000 telematics installations throughout Europe, and will combine Lysanda’s B2B customer base alongside Tracker’s long-standing B2C sales reach.

The acquisition has been funded by the existing Lysanda investors, including the Sustainable Technology Fund, Rockhopper Investments and Disruptive Capital Finance LLP.

Stephen Doran, managing director of Tracker, said: “In 2013, we outperformed our growth targets in all of our markets, despite the fairly intense process of managing the sale of the business, so we are understandably looking forward to focusing on the opportunities presented by combining the technologies and business operations of both companies which can only serve to accelerate our development.

“The acquisition of Tracker by Lysanda very importantly allows us to become an independent service to the insurance market.

“It also provides the investment capital we need to take our business forward and achieve new levels of success, bringing our customers a growing range of services to meet their ever changing needs.”

Lysanda’s CEO Cédriane de Boucaud said: “Lysanda has been at the forefront of developing highly strategic and innovative solutions for fleet operators, OEMs, and their tier one suppliers. 

“The technology has very broad applicability and we believe it is poised for rapid growth.

“By acquiring Tracker we have immediate scale and extended infrastructure that gives our fleet operators, OEM customers and other prospects confidence that we can deliver both volume and support to major vehicle roll-out projects.

“Tracker has tremendous depth and experience in managing a very large, real-time customer base and has a highly complementary product range that Lysanda can leverage, combining VHF and GPS-based technologies. 

“Our customers want both in-production and after-market solutions and Tracker is very experienced in delivering to both the business and consumer market places.”