Good morning Eurohubsters, Craig McGlashan here with Tuesday’s Dealflow.
Today we’re looking at an add-on for a Riverside Company portfolio firm as well as the latest developments in Triton Partners and Bain Capital’s race to buy Finnish construction firm Caverion. We also have some highlights from Bain & Company’s Global M&A Report 2023 plus some promotions at AnaCap. But first, some news about PE Hub Europe itself.
Editor’s note: Today is the last day to access PE Hub Europe’s outstanding private equity deals coverage sitewide, for free. Beginning tomorrow, 1 February, your access will be limited unless you are a subscriber.
To continue with unlimited access to our deal transaction coverage, Q&As with prominent sources in PE deal-making and more, we are offering Dealflow readers promotional pricing for a limited time here.
Add-on. The Riverside Company has acquired EnAppSys, a data and analytics provider, for its Montel platform.
Based in Middlesbrough in the UK, EnAppSys serves B2B clients across the energy market. The firm has a blue-chip customer base across 12 countries in Europe, the US and the UAE.
The company intends to accelerate global expansion while also bolstering Montel’s analytical product offering and skills, as well as bringing significant sales synergies and deep knowledge of intraday traded markets, according to a release.
“EnAppSys is extremely strong in Great Britain and Ireland, where Montel has limited operations, and provides a strong base in Benelux,” said Riverside Europe managing partner Karsten Langer, in a statement. “Similarly, Montel is strong in the Nordics and DACH region, and has a fast-growing presence in France, Iberia and CEE, which will allow the combined group to serve pan-European markets with a more complete product offering.”
We’ve been seeing plenty of coverage with an analytical bent of late. Last week, Permira said it will acquire a majority stake in Acuity Knowledge Partners from Equistone Partners Europe, while earlier in January Bregal Sagemount made a strategic growth investment in Enhesa, a provider of regulatory and sustainability intelligence.
Timetable. Triton Partners has shifted its timetable for publishing a tender offer document for Finnish construction firm Caverion.
The private equity firm made the move as it said it was mulling its options after its rival bidder for Caverion, Bain Capital, upped its offer on 24 January.
Triton’s original plan had been to publish its tender offer around 30 January, with the acceptance period running from then until around 11 April. It said it will announce the new timetable after it has finished considering its options.
Read PE Hub Europe’s in-depth piece to learn the full backstory on the battle between Triton and Bain for control of Caverion and how it could be a harbinger of things to come in European private equity.
Staying local. I’ve been leafing through Bain & Company’s Global M&A Report 2023 this morning and a few things jumped out at me.
One was that there has been a shift in the amount of cross-border activity.
“Taking a geographic lens, we continued to see a preference for in-region targets as supply chain shocks, China-US decoupling, and geopolitical risks focused acquirer attention on targets closer to home,” said the report. “Europe shifted to intraregional deals, representing more than three-quarters of deal value in 2022 compared with about two-thirds in recent years.”
The report also noted that in 2022, “the regulatory environment reflected the longer-term trend of increased scrutiny on antitrust and national security grounds”. Antitrust is something we’ve been looking at closely – particularly against the backdrop the bidding war between Bain and Triton for control of Caverion that we discussed above.
One final point was that last year, many of the deals in Europe “were aimed at entering and consolidating the UK market”. We’ll have a deep dive on one big UK deal, Energy Capital Partners’ acquisition of Biffa, later this week. Here’s the brief on the deal in the meantime.
Partnering up. AnaCap Financial Partners has made partners Nassim Cherchali and Tassilo Arnhold co-managing partners.
The two have led AnaCap’s overall investment strategy, which focuses on lower mid-market, founder-owned financial services, tech and business services companies in Europe since 2016.
AnaCap CEO and chief investment officer Joe Giannamore has become group executive chairman, although his responsibilities for operations, strategy and investment recommendations are unchanged.
Read more on Anacap’s strategy here.
That’s it from me – I’ll be back with you again tomorrow.
Cheers,
Craig