London, 29 September 2006

FirstCapital, the technology corporate finance house, today announces that Kingston Communications, the provider of integrated and converged communications services, has acquired Smart421 for a cash consideration of £24.2 million, including cash and cash equivalents of approximately £4.0 million. FirstCapital acted as exclusive financial advisor to Smart421 in the transaction.

Smart421 is a specialist in the area of business applications integration and increasingly delivers both integration and ongoing applications managed services to blue chip organisations. The business has developed long term partnerships with its customers and currently provides services to some of Europe's largest blue chip businesses including O2, Norwich Union, E2V and UPC.

Smart421, which will be managed as a discrete business entity, provides a complementary and strong strategic fit within Kingston and in particular, with the Affiniti communications integration business.

In the year ended 30 June 2006, Smart421 reported turnover of £11.1 million (2005: £8.9 million) and profit before tax of £1.5 million (2005: £0.3 million). As at that date, the business had gross assets of £6.6 million, including a cash and cash equivalents balance of £3.4 million. On present performance, the acquisition will be immediately earnings accretive.

Commenting on the acquisition, Malcolm Fallen, Chief Executive of Kingston Communications, said: "The acquisition of Smart421 provides an exciting opportunity for Kingston. The business has an outstanding reputation in the applications integration marketplace, offering a high quality service to its customers. The Group will benefit from the immediate extension of application-related skills, particularly through Smart421's Microsoft and IBM capabilities."

Julian Harris, Chairman of Smart421 commented: "I am delighted with the service delivered by the team at FirstCapital. They worked with us to position Smart421 as a key strategic asset in the marketplace. They leveraged their trusted and deep relationships inside target acquirers on a global basis. They were totally committed, ran the whole process with the utmost attention to detail and delivered an excellent result for the shareholders, management and the company."

About Kingston Communications

Kingston Communications is a leading provider of communications. Its capabilities are built on the solid experience gained in its heartland in East Yorkshire, where it has been providing leading edge residential and business services for 100 years.

Today, we also offer a wide range of voice, data and internet services to businesses across the UK as well as outsourced contact centre services. Using our own network infrastructure, we deliver reliable, cost effective connections for our customers. By listening and working closely with them, we use our experience and expertise to help companies serve their own customers as effectively as possible.

Kingston Communications is a London Stock Exchange TechMARK member company.

For further details on Kingston Communications, please visit our website at www.kcom.com

About Smart421

Smart421 is a managed services and integration specialist, providing outsourced IT services for mid-market and enterprise organisations in both the public and private sectors. Smart421 focuses on three key solution areas: Managed Services, Integration and Innovation, delivered using a unique onshore/offshore service structure. This allows Smart421 to combine onshore project management and expertise with offshore development and technical services, to deliver a rare combination of innovation, excellent customer service and demonstrable cost savings.

Smart421 maintains good relationships with its technology partners to sustain its specialist technology skills and deliver expertise and scale. Smart421 has close associations with Indian based organisation Tech Mahindra and is an IBM Premier and Tier One WebSphere Services partner and a Microsoft Gold and Oracle Partner.

Founded in 2000 and headquartered in Ipswich, UK, Smart421 has over 130 employees. Smart421 values the long term relationships built with some of Europe's largest organisations and its customer base includes Norwich Union, UPC Broadband, O2 and E.ON.

For further details on Smart421, please visit our website at www.smart421.com

About FirstCapital

FirstCapital is an investment bank that specialises in fund raising and mergers and acquisitions advice for high growth technology companies. Established in 1999, it has offices in London and Cambridge, UK. Clients include entrepreneurs, technology companies and investors in private companies.

Our team is experienced in a wide variety of deals, from growth companies to multinationals in both UK and international cross border transactions. We provide pro-active, informed, full service deal management, including assistance with strategy and planning, finding and approaching investors or M&A targets, valuations and hands-on transaction execution.
We work in partnership with our clients to achieve their goals, offering impartial advice and support based on our knowledge of the market and of each client's individual requirements, and sharing alongside them in the risks and the rewards of success.

FirstCapital is authorised and regulated by the UK Financial Services Authority.

For more information, contact: Jason Purcell, CEO on +44 (0)20 8563 1563 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .