British flexible workspace operator Orega has just given itself a serious growth engine. The company has completed a management buyout backed by UK private equity firm Apiary Capital, which now holds a majority stake. The deal, whose financial terms haven’t been disclosed, is designed to do one thing: accelerate Orega’s expansion across the UK flexible office market.
For an operator that has quietly built one of the country’s most respected management-agreement portfolios, this is a significant moment. It also says a lot about where investor confidence in the flex sector currently sits.
From founder-led to PE-backed, without losing the team
What makes this buyout notable isn’t just the capital injection. It’s the structure. CEO Alan Pepper and the existing executive team (CFO Chris Toon, COO David Kinnaird, CRO Sophie Turnbull and real estate director Ben Hutchen) are staying in place and taking a stake in the business themselves. Apiary Capital becomes the majority owner and financial backer, while founders Zach Douglas and Paul Finch remain investors. Douglas is stepping back from his role as executive chairman to become a non-executive director.
In other words: the people who built Orega’s operating model keep running it, but now have institutional firepower behind them. Pepper described the deal as the start of “a new chapter” for the 25-year-old business.
Doubling the network, one management agreement at a time
Orega currently operates 25 centres across the UK, eight of them in London, spanning roughly 62,700 square metres and serving more than 10,000 customers. Under Apiary’s backing, the company wants to roughly double that footprint to 50 locations by 2031, with growth targeted at London and the UK’s other major regional hubs: Birmingham, Bristol, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds and Manchester, plus selected smaller markets.
The expansion strategy leans entirely on Orega’s existing playbook: management agreements rather than conventional leases. Under this model, Orega runs the space and shares revenue with the building owner instead of signing a traditional lease and carrying that risk itself. It’s a structure that has become increasingly attractive to landlords looking to add flexible space to their buildings without handing over full operational control, and increasingly attractive to operators who don’t want the balance-sheet exposure of long leases in an uncertain rates environment.
Orega says the model isn’t a niche approach anymore, either. The company points to figures suggesting that around two-thirds of flexible workspace deals struck in early 2025 were structured as management agreements, evidence that the rest of the market is moving toward the same setup Orega has built its business around.
Why investors are betting on flex right now
The Orega deal doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It lands alongside forecasts of 8-10% annual growth for the flexible office sector through 2031, and CBRE projections that flexible space could represent 20% of London’s total office stock by 2030, up from around 12% today. Apiary’s investment director framed the logic simply: as businesses continue moving away from rigid, long-term leases toward space that flexes with hybrid headcounts and real estate risk, well-run flex operators are positioned to capture that shift.
That logic will sound familiar to anyone tracking the wider European market. Landlords across the continent, including in the Netherlands, are increasingly open to management or partnership agreements with flexible workspace operators rather than insisting on traditional leases, precisely because it lets them participate in the upside of flex demand without becoming an operator themselves. Orega’s growth plan is, in effect, a live test case for how far that model can scale when it’s backed by serious institutional capital rather than organic reinvestment alone.
For UK flex space, it’s also a signal that private equity sees more room to run in an already fast-growing segment. Buyouts and majority-stake deals in this space have tended to focus on larger, multinational operators; a mid-sized UK specialist with a strong management-agreement track record attracting a dedicated PE backer suggests the investment case for flexible workspace is broadening, not narrowing.
What this means for operators, landlords and occupiers
For landlords weighing whether to bring flexible space into their buildings, Orega’s expansion is another data point supporting the management-agreement model as a credible, revenue-sharing alternative to leasing space to a single long-term tenant or handing it entirely to an operator. For occupiers, more Orega locations across the UK’s major cities means more choice in markets where demand for high-quality flexible space continues to outstrip readily available supply, particularly outside London, where operators have historically concentrated.
And for the broader flex industry, this deal reinforces a pattern worth watching closely: institutional capital isn’t just chasing the biggest global brands anymore. It’s backing operators with proven, repeatable models, wherever they happen to sit in the market.
Keep an eye on how Orega’s expansion unfolds over the next few years. And if you’re a landlord or operator exploring management agreements as an alternative to traditional leasing, now is a good time to understand how that model actually works in practice.
