Management Buy-Back at Arrow Media

The management of the factual producer Arrow Media is buying back shares from Channel 4, invested through its indie Growth Fund.

Arrow took investment from C4’s Growth Fund around three years ago. It is the first company to complete a buy-back of its shares from Channel 4. Arrow has more than doubled in size since the Growth Fund investment, growing from an annual turnover of £8 million to £20 million.

Tom Brisley and John Smithson, Arrow’s joint creative directors, said: “The Growth Fund’s investment has been hugely beneficial to Arrow, both in terms of the development of our business and enabling our creative ambition. We are now making more returning series, specials and singles, working across all platforms, including film and SVOD. The Growth Fund investment has achieved everything we wanted it to. We have a very exciting future ahead of us and have ambitions to work with even more partners in 2018 and beyond, in the U.K., the U.S. and globally.”

Jonathan Allan, chief commercial officer at Channel 4, commented: “We have really enjoyed working with Iain, Tom and John over the last three years and are proud to have played an important role in the impressive growth of their business. Arrow’s success has enabled them to become fully independent again, demonstrating another way our valuable Fund model can be helpful to developing British businesses. This is now the third successful exit from our investment portfolio, which helps bolster our ongoing commitment to supporting the creative sector across the whole of the U.K.”