Good morning Eurohubsters, Nina Lindholm here with Friday’s Dealflow.
Deal announcements are definitely back in full swing this week. Financial services and software, and combinations of the two, have been especially active. We’ll take a look at some of those deals today, which include Falfurrias-backed Crosslake picking up a due diligence service provider, AnaCap’s MRHT buying a pension and consulting business and Main Capital-backed Optimizers snapping up Vendre, an ecommerce platform provider. We also have some take-private action to report on, with Mayfair Equity Partners and maternity wear chain Seraphine.
Expecting. Mayfair Equity Partners has made a 30p-a-share offer for London-listed maternity wear chain Seraphine, according to Sky News.
The deal would be a discount of approximately 90 percent to the IPO price of 295p 18 months ago.
Mayfair is an existing backer of Seraphine, having invested in the business in December 2020. In July 2021, Seraphine was admitted to the Main Market of the London Stock Exchange, after which Mayfair remained a minority shareholder.
Seraphine has a market value of £4.8m (€5.5m; $5.9m), having seen its shares collapse by 95 percent in the last 12 months.
Mayfair’s offer is at a premium of more than 200 percent to Thursday’s closing share price of 9.8p.
If you’re interested in more take-private news, take a look at Craig McGlashan’s story about Triton Partners’ and Bain Capital’s battle over Finnish building company Caverion. You can read the story here.
Add-on. Moving on to the first of the financial services deals I mentioned earlier. Falfurrias Capital-backed Crosslake Technologies acquired Intechnica, a technology firm, for £14.5 million ($17.9 million; €16.5 million).
Manchester-headquartered Intechnica has assisted over 350 transactions around the globe, with a value of over $15 billion. It offers services in due diligence and other areas.
The acquisition is expected to accelerate the firm’s European presence and expand its global capabilities.
To find out more about Crosslake’s acquisitions, read our full reporting on the deal here.
Pension. Next up, we have AnaCap-backed MRH Trowe (MRHT) buying Lurse, a DACH pension and consulting specialist.
Lurse, based in Germany, operates in the benefits and human resources industry, and offers brokerage and consulting services. The firm has over 500 clients across many sectors including several large DAX-listed companies and employs 200 FTEs from seven offices in Germany and Switzerland.
Lurse’s addition is expected to cement MRHT’s capabilities within the B&P space. The firm will retain Lurse’s founding partners post the sale and will increase responsibilities within the firm.
“We see the pensions and broader brokerage landscape continuing to undergo rapid consolidation and look forward to announcing further complementary deal activity in 2023,” said Tassilo Arnhold, private equity partner at AnaCap.
The prospective deal will be the 21st since AnaCap’s partnership with MRHT in October 2020. If you want to read more about MRHT’s bolt-ons, you can read the full reporting here.
Healthy. Let’s sprinkle in a little bit of healthcare. SCIRIS acquired Source Health Economics, marking its sixth acquisition since Waterland Private Equity invested in the firm in 2020.
Source Health Economics, based in London, is a firm specialising in health economics and outcomes research (HEOR), and has 33 employees.
“We see this latest acquisition as an opportunity to access new key markets and increase SCIRIS’ scale in its existing medical communications activity, to broaden client relationships and develop expertise across high growth therapeutic areas,” said Dominic Graham, investment director at Waterland Private Equity. “We are actively looking for further opportunities to acquire specialist service providers in adjacent market segments in the UK and internationally.”
Our full reporting on the deal is available here.
Optimal. As the last piece of our weekly round-up we have Main Capital’s portfolio company Optimizers buying Vendre, an ecommerce platform provider.
Stockholm-headquartered Vendre is a SaaS company with a module-based ecommerce platform. The firm serves more than 120 customers in Sweden, mainly SMEs in both B2B and B2C markets.
The acquisition has added to Optimizers product offering and has expanded its market presence in the Nordics region.
“The combination will help accelerate Optimizers’ growth momentum and solidify the presence in a core region,” said Pieter van Bodegraven, partner at Main Capital Partners. “Additionally, Vendre will complement Optimizers’ current product suite and strengthen the combined product offering.”
To find out more about the deal, including Optimizers’ recurring revenue growth, take a look at our full reporting here.
That’s it from me. I hope you all have a great weekend. Craig McGlashan will write to you on Monday.
Cheers,
Nina