OEP agrees to buy Amey from Ferrovial; SCP makes first exit with Noden sale

Good morning Eurohubsters, Craig McGlashan here with Wednesday’s Dealflow.

We’ve been busy attending conferences and meeting with private equity firms in the last few weeks. One strong theme we’ve picked up is that dealmakers are looking to sectors like digitalisation and pharma as other industries feel the bite of the rising cost of living. The deals we take a look at today definitely reflect that trend.

Public service. One Equity Partners (OEP) announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Amey from Ferrovial for £400 million ($442 million; €445 million). Amey is an engineering consultancy and infrastructure services provider.

Amey, headquartered in London, is a contractor to the UK government and public sector. The company’s core markets are transport and infrastructure and government buildings. It offers services covering engineering and systems design, data science, analytics and digitalisation.

“Amey is a well-regarded, long-standing player in the critical infrastructure design and management space in the UK, and we are very excited about the enhanced opportunities for growth Amey will have as an independent company,” said Ante Kusurin, principal at OEP, in a statement. “We believe that the UK’s decarbonisation efforts and net zero strategy will also accelerate growth by creating new opportunities for sustainable infrastructure.”

Buckthorn Partners partnered with OEP in the deal.

Check out our coverage of the deal to learn about Amey’s revenues and EBITDA and other facts about the company.

The right medicine. Stanley Capital Partners (SCP) announced that it has exited its portfolio company Noden Pharma. Dublin-headquartered Noden, in which SCP invested in July 2020, is a global speciality pharmaceutical company that is focused on the manufacturing of prescription medicines across a variety of cardiovascular treatments.

The buyer is a European business in the specialist pharmaceutical sector, SCP said.

SCP aided Noden’s inorganic and organic growth, the firm said. Noden also improved its operational efficiency, cashflow and secured an ongoing API source, securing a strong return for SCP and its investors in a short period of time, according to SCP.

Read our report on the deal to find out the COC and IRR that SCP achieved with the exit.

Finding an identity. Over at our stablemate PE Hub, our US colleagues reported that Thoma Bravo is buying digital identity management provider ForgeRock in an all-cash deal valued at about $2.3 billion.

“Identity-centric cybersecurity solutions are a critical enabler for businesses to digitally transform their operations, and ForgeRock’s solutions combine both the advanced security and customer usability needed in the market,” said Chip Virnig, a partner at Thoma Bravo, in a statement. “We look forward to partnering with ForgeRock to leverage our deep sector expertise and support the company to capitalise on this tremendous market opportunity.”

Thoma Bravo has been pretty keen on identity management firms this year, as PE Hub has reported. That has included an all-cash take-private deal for Ping Identity in August that valued the firm at around $2.8 billion. The same month, it closed the acquisition of SailPoint Technologies, an enterprise identity security software developer, in a take-private all-cash deal worth bout $6.9 billion.

While those US deals have gone through, though, Thoma Bravo’s interest in a UK cybersecurity company cooled last month.

PE Hub Europe reported in early September that Cambridge-headquartered Darktrace said in a statement: “Early-stage discussions took place with Thoma Bravo about a possible offer for the company but an agreement could not be reached on the terms of a firm offer.”

That wasn’t the only time in the last few weeks that US interest in a UK cybersecurity firm failed to make it to a deal.

We reported last week that Chicago, Illinois-based private equity firm GTCR’s potential cash offer for GB Group, an identity verification, location intelligence and fraud prevention firm based in Chester in England, was not going ahead after the firms said they could not agree terms.

That’s it from me, I’ll be back with you tomorrow.

Cheers,

Craig