Matt Newing’s first experiments in business involved a container of second-hand bicycles. He bought the bikes, sold them for a profit and discovered that he liked the arithmetic. A bicycle is an obliging introduction to commerce: you can inspect it, agree a price and watch the customer ride away. The difficulty, for anyone with an appetite for growth, is that you then need another bicycle.
Later, someone explained the appeal of royalties. A singer or author could do the work once and receive money afterwards. Newing’s attention settled on that second part. He found his own version in memorable telephone numbers and the software that helped businesses understand their calls. A number could bring in call income; the software could carry a monthly charge. There was no requirement to write a chorus.
That interest in what happens after a sale helps explain the career that followed. Newing founded Elite in 2000, then used acquisitions to extend its reach and capabilities. Along the way he became an investor in other founders, a mentor and a chairman. His story turns on a series of practical questions about what a customer will keep paying for, and who can deliver it.
The attraction of being paid again
Newing grew up in St Helens and studied at its technical college. An early security venture began with someone he met there. He was frustrated by the standards he encountered in the sector and thought better training, better people and better wages could support a more professional service. Charging more had to come with a reason a customer could recognise.
That business eventually became Churchill Security, later Churchill Support Services and, in 2025, ProFM Group. Its widening remit would take it beyond guarding into facilities management. Long before the technology acquisitions, Newing was already dealing with a familiar problem in service businesses: the quality promised to a customer depends on the person who turns up.
Elite began in his bedroom, selling business telephone numbers. It moved into premises the following year with two staff. Telecoms deregulation had created room for businesses that could assemble services around customers’ needs. The opening was commercial as much as technical. Newing spotted a way to earn continuing income by supplying something other businesses needed every working day.
A schematic of Elite’s early offer, rather than a financial forecast.
When the bank stopped queuing
The acquisition programme began in 2008 with GP Telecom. Buying a business offered an alternative to finding each new customer individually. It also brought the obligations attached to those customers. The transaction was the beginning of the work, with service, systems and relationships still to be managed once the paperwork was signed.
The next year supplied a less comfortable lesson. Elite bought public-sector telecoms provider CAN Networks for £1.3 million. Arranging the deal took three months. Newing said the bank wanted existing debts cleared before it would lend again, with higher interest costs. Elite repaid its borrowing, and he provided a short-term director’s loan to finance the purchase.
He contrasted that experience with the £3 million GP Telecom purchase, when lenders had been eager to help. The financial crisis had changed the conversation. A founder could recognise the same kind of opportunity and discover that the machinery for paying for it now worked quite differently. Newing’s response was to put his own money into the gap.
By August 2018, the banking conversation looked different again. Elite announced a £30 million refinancing agreement with Lloyds, following a review of funding options with Clearwater. Sixteen acquisitions had been completed. The facility gave the group room for further purchases while protecting the cash needed for everyday operations. Buying companies had become an organised programme, supported by advisers and dedicated finance.
Refinancing agreed with Lloyds Bank after 16 completed acquisitions.
Buying the people who know how
The purchases also changed character. Contracted customers and recurring income remained attractive, but specialist knowledge became increasingly useful. In 2016, NetCentrix and SystemHOST brought cloud platforms and hosted IT capabilities into Elite. The acquisition added a third data centre to its network and a team accustomed to helping organisations move their IT into hosted environments.
In 2019, Wrexham’s MWL Systems became Elite’s seventeenth acquisition since 2008. It brought another 40 IT staff. A headcount figure can look dry on a transaction announcement. For a business promising technical support, however, those people represent the ability to answer questions, solve problems and take on work that might previously have been beyond reach.
Newing’s appetite came with a selection problem. In March 2019, he wanted Elite’s turnover to exceed £100 million within three years, but said suitable businesses were difficult to find. He wanted existing expertise and products that Elite could help expand, rather than a product that still needed developing and launching from scratch.
His later advice to sellers was unusually concerned with housekeeping. Keep records and employment documents in order. Watch customer credit. Avoid excessive dependence on one client. These are unglamorous subjects for a dealmaker, which is precisely their attraction. A buyer eventually has to live with the business described in the sales presentation.
The long route to the chief executive’s chair
There is another way to acquire knowledge: let someone work through the organisation. Adam Turton joined Elite as a graduate and spent time in departments including finance, human resources, customer service and marketing under Newing’s guidance. The company gave him a view of its workings well before it gave him responsibility for leading them.
In 2023, Turton succeeded Rob Sims as chief executive through an agreed succession plan. Sims moved into a board adviser role. Newing, identified as founder and chairman in the appointment announcement, described Turton’s promotion as the result of years of commitment. For a company assembled partly through acquisitions, the handover offered a quieter example of growth happening inside.
“Make their day.”
Matt Newing, describing Elite’s culture in 2017
The phrase is brief enough to survive a meeting. Its usefulness lies in the discretion it implies: someone has to decide what would improve another person’s day. In that same period, Newing spoke about giving promising people freedom to develop. Turton’s progression makes the idea tangible, with responsibility accumulating across different kinds of work over many years.
An introduction, then an investment
Outside Elite, Newing’s investments reveal an interest in the practical business of getting work done. DriverNet founder Ant Chisnall reached him through an old school friend. Chisnall had spent 17 years in logistics before founding the software company in 2017. Its tools helped coordinate dispatch, routes, arrival times and mobile teams.
By December 2019, Newing was increasing his stake. The introduction had connected an investor with a founder who knew the daily frustrations of the industry he wanted to serve. Routing a workforce offers fewer opportunities for theatre than launching a consumer gadget. It does, however, give customers a recurring reason to care whether the software works.
In March 2020, Newing invested £400,000 in Liverpool-based E-Sign. The company provided electronic signatures and secure document transactions, competing in a market containing DocuSign and Adobe. Managing director Thomas Taylor said the funding would support expansion. The investment fitted a recognisable pattern: a useful business process, delivered through software, with room to reach more customers.
Newing’s description of angel investing returns to the help he received early in his career. He wants other entrepreneurs to get a footing. That brings a different responsibility from buying a company outright: supporting a founder’s decisions while giving them space to make those decisions. His portfolio supplies several settings in which to practise that balance.
A name that fits the work
Years of adding capabilities do not settle how a business should present them. In 2024, Elite announced that its IT services would move to the revived Netcentrix brand. Elite would concentrate on cloud communications, contact centres, voice and mobile. Both businesses would sit within New Technology Group. The announcement said the reorganisation brought no redundancies.
It was a useful complication to the familiar acquisition story. Combining businesses can make services easier to buy; separating specialist offers can make them easier to understand. A founder who has spent years broadening a company still has to ask whether its structure helps the people doing the work and the customers trying to find them.
On the Isle of Man, a different arrangement took shape. In 2025, Wi-Manx, Elite Group IOM and IT Works came together under Noventre. At the rebrand, the business served nearly 500 business customers and more than 1,500 residential customers. The new brand covered home connectivity, business technology and international telecoms services. Newing, a part-owner, framed the change around simpler customer relationships and continued investment.
The help that comes back around
The Isle of Man is also home. He lives there with his family, with interests including sailing, mountain biking and jet skiing. The landscape offers rather more movement than a boardroom. He has also supported education through ActionAid and become an ambassador for the Prince’s Trust, whose Enterprise programme helped him get started.
That early help included a £1,000 grant and a £2,500 loan. The amounts make a useful counterpoint to the later acquisition finance. At the beginning, a relatively small sum could make a business possible. Later, he could offer money, experience and introductions to people at that stage themselves.
The bicycles belong at the beginning of this story because they show a first discovery: a transaction could create a margin. The phone numbers added a second discovery: the income could continue. What followed required people who could keep supplying something worth paying for. Newing’s career has returned to that requirement through security teams, software founders and a graduate who eventually became chief executive.