IK Investment Partners to support Third Bridge

IK Investment Partners (“IK”), a leading Pan-European private equity firm, is pleased to announce that the IK Small Cap I Fund has reached an agreement with the founders and the management team to acquire a minority stake in Third Bridge (or “the Company”), a fast-growing primary research provider with a global footprint. Financial terms of the transaction are not disclosed.

Third Bridge provides its clients with unique insights into companies and markets through access to industry experts and market research. Serving a client base of over 300 customers, including private equity funds, consulting firms, hedge funds and corporates, Third Bridge has a global footprint, with six offices covering America, Asia and Europe. Since inception in 2007, the Company has doubled its turnover every two years, and now employs more than 550 people.

The Company’s strong growth has been supported by growth capital investor Beringea, which provided funding through its ProVen VCTs in November 2012. Under the agreement, Beringea will sell its shares in Third Bridge.

“As a client of Third Bridge, our paths have crossed many times, and we have always been very impressed by the Company and the exceptionally experienced management team. We share their values and vision for growth, and as a minority partner, we are proud to support the continued development of Third Bridge’s business model and expansion of the service offering,” said Pierre Gallix, Partner at IK Investment Partners and advisor to the IK Small Cap I Fund.

“Third Bridge has seen fantastic growth over the last 10 years, and the support from IK will enable us to maintain this strong performance, and bring us closer to our vision of being the first port of call for investors seeking the best intelligence. We are excited about working with the IK team, who share our ambitions and have a stellar reputation for supporting founder-led businesses,” said, Emmanuel Tahar, CEO and co-founder of Third Bridge.

Completion of the transaction is subject to legal and regulatory approvals.

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KPN Ventures joins €8M investment round in Belgian data company Sentiance

KPN Ventures

Antwerp, New York, June 22, 2017

Sentiance announces today that it has secured €8 million in funding led by Volta Ventures, with co-investor KPN Ventures. All previous investors including Samsung Catalyst Fund, Qbic, Pamica (investment company of Michel Akkermans) and top management participated in the new funding round. The investment will be used to execute on Sentiance’s vision to gain leadership, strengthen its intelligence platform and accelerate the growth globally.

The company’s platform uses machine learning algorithms and deep learning techniques to analyse IOT sensor data from mobile phones, wearables and IoT gateways. Sentiance turns this data into rich behavioural and contextual insights: understanding and predicting how people go through their everyday lives. Clients use the Sentiance platform to enrich their first-party customer data with real-life behavioural data so they can deliver context-aware and highly personalized experiences. Sentiance powers a broad range of applications including world class telematics and driver scoring, personalized health coaching, real-time customer engagement as well as smart home products and services.

“As IOT gains momentum consumers are rapidly adopting smart objects in their everyday lives. The sensors in these IOT devices generate a ton of data about how they behave and why they behave the way they do. Sentiance helps companies make sense of this new and very powerful data. Some of the world’s most innovative companies are adopting our platform to help them make their customers’ lives safer, smarter, healthier and convenient. Ultimately the Internet of Things should be about people, not things. We believe the real promise of IOT is the Internet of You.” said Toon Vanparys, CEO of Sentiance.

“Major players in the insurance, ride-hailing, mobility, health and IOT industries use Sentiance’s AI platform to power the Internet of You. This has the potential to change the lives of everyone around us which makes working with the Sentiance team such a positive and rewarding experience. ” said Frank Maene managing partner of Volta Ventures. “Sentiance was the first investment we made when we started the fund in January 2015 and we’re excited to continue our journey with them as the team grows to its next stage.”

Herman Kienhuis, managing director of KPN Ventures adds: “The future digital customer experience will be fully personalized. Sentiance’ powerful predictive analysis technology offers companies a unique tool to improve their customers’ experience and develop new personalized services, while respecting strict European privacy laws. We’re happy to support the Sentiance team in realizing this ambition, together with a powerful group of international investors”

About Sentiance
Sentiance is a data science company turning IOT sensor data into rich insights about people’s behaviour and real-time context. Sentiance was born in January 2015, has offices in Antwerp, New York and London. More than 80% of the employees are highly skilled data scientists and software engineers, specialized in machine learning, deep learning and signal processing. As an enabling platform, Sentiance focuses on large innovation driven companies and disruptors, as a partner and collaborator to drive transformational change. Sentiance core purpose is to become the context engine for the Internet of You leveraging our core expertise in behavioural analytics based on observed data by assisting them in building out deeper and more valuable relations with their end-customers. www.sentiance.com

About Volta Ventures
Volta Ventures Arkiv invests in young and ambitious internet and software companies in the Benelux. The fund’s team, with active support from some 30 business angels, expects to make a substantial impact on every company it invests in by working with the founders and management to identify new markets and customers, hire senior talent, provide ongoing guidance and arrange further financing rounds. Volta Ventures Arkiv is supported by ARKimedes-Fund II (an initiative of ParticipatieMaatschappij Vlaanderen NV and the Flemish Region) and the European Investment Fund. www.volta.ventures

About KPN Ventures
KPN Ventures is the venturing arm of KPN, The Netherlands’ leading telecom & ICT company. KPN Ventures aims to build value-creating partnership with innovative technology companies, providing access to capital, expertise, network and customer channels. It focuses on early growth-stage investments in European companies in the segments: Internet of Things, Connected Home, Digital Healthcare, Cyber Security, Mobile/OTT services, Cloud Computing and Data & Analytics. KPN Ventures has its main office in Rotterdam, The Netherlands and has invested in a.o. ActilityEclecticIQSecurityMattersVilocSensaraCardioSecur and Nello.
www.kpnventures.com | twitter.com/kpnventures

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Reiten & Co sells its shareholding in Data Respons ASA

Reiten

Reiten & Co Capital Partners VII L.P. has sold its 32.7% ownership interest in Data Respons ASA, at NOK 26.5 per share, representing a total transaction sum of approximately NOK 426.3m. The transaction was done through an accelerated bookbuilding process yesterday.

Data Respons has over the years strategically positioned itself at the heart of the on-going digitalization trends and developed into a leading European provider of embedded solutions and high-quality R&D services. Every journey has its end, and Reiten & Co would like to thank Mr Kenneth Ragnvaldsen (CEO) and the highly skilled organization for outstanding contribution to value creation.

“We have been invested in Data Respons since 2009 and it has been very rewarding to work with such a competent and professional team. The company has successfully strengthened its position within R&D services, both through accretive acquisitions and organic growth. It is well positioned in the centre of the digitalization and internet-of-things megatrends, with products and services that the customers value highly,” says Narve Reiten, founding partner of Reiten & Co.

“Through our sale of shares we expect the free-float and liquidity in the stock will increase, and that the company will continue to perform strongly,” Mr. Reiten adds.

Mr. Reiten has served as a board member since 2015, and he will continue as a board member. The brokers required Mr. Reiten to invest NOK 10 million in shares with a six-month lock up. He will therefore continue as a shareholder in Data Respons, through his private investment company.

 

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Summa Equity builds platform for big-data enabled businesses

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Summa Equity establishes Summa Digital – a platform for big data enabled businesses with ground breaking technologies within their respective field. The platform holds three businesses that Summa Equity has added to its portfolio. 

Summa Equity has invested in Swedish IVBAR Institute AB, Norwegian Documaster AS and UK-based Qlearsite Ltd. All three companies are early actors with leading solutions within different areas of big data solutions.

Christian Melby, Partner at Summa Equity said: “The field of data analytics is growing exponentially. Niche markets are developing solutions tailored to the specific needs of businesses and organisations. IVBAR, Documaster and Qlearsite are all pioneers within their respective fields and have succeeded in developing technically sophisticated solutions with strong value propositions for users. We have closely followed the companies’ rapid market traction, the positive feedback received from customers and how the products have proven to be very solid.”

Summa Equity is focused on helping Summa Digital companies in their next phase of development, with funding and support to scale up the businesses for broader roll-out and growth acceleration.

Tommi Unkuri, Partner at Summa Equity, said: “The joint big data platform creates good conditions for synergies in for example go-to-market and development processes. These will be important growth enablers and accelerators.”

IVBAR is a Swedish digital health company that has developed a big data analytics platform, ERA Vision, that enables improved management of healthcare through a focus on patient value. The platform improves transparency and provides unique levels of insight into both health outcomes and resource allocation, and is useful for both payors and providers of healthcare. IVBAR’s solutions have been developed in collaboration with both public and private partners, and the company has succeeded in consolidating vast amounts of highly fragmented healthcare data, enabling a level of insight previously unseen in the system. ERA Vision is used for advanced benchmarking, performance monitoring and calculation of reimbursement.

Tommi Unkuri, continued: “IVBAR addresses fundamentally important topics in the healthcare sector and we believe that IVBAR will have a strong positive contribution to its customers and to patients. IVBAR’s solutions are highly scalable across countries, and the underlying challenges are similar in all healthcare systems. IVBAR has a unique position to provide solutions, based on close collaborations with public health providers in Sweden, its in-depth knowledge of the healthcare system, and a unique digital platform.”

Documaster is a Norwegian digital record management company with core competence on digitization, information management and cloud-based archiving of valuable data. The company has developed a unique technology that addresses an increasing need for efficient and compliant archiving, driven by the rapid growth in digital documentation as well as an increased regulatory focus on record management. The solutions enable organisations to capture, process and preserve data in one single application, where it can easily and instantly be accessed through user-friendly retrieval and search functionality, whilst catering to relevant compliance requirements. The company offers a system agnostic archiving core that is compliant with EU and local regulations.

Christian Melby, said: “Digital documentation is growing at an exponential rate and is rapidly phasing out physical documentation, leaving companies with out-dated, underperforming systems for record management. This is a growing headache for companies and institutions worldwide, and put them at risk of failure to meet regulatory standards. With Documaster’s solutions, organisations are able to regain control of their data. Documaster’s impressive technologies help customers to decommission legacy systems, digitalize paper documents, and gather all records into one application that is user friendly and quick to implement.”

Qlearsite is an early actor in the rapidly growing field of people analytics for human resource management, based in the United Kingdom. The company has developed a technology that is specifically designed to analyse and make predictions about the behaviour of people in a workforce, using both structured and unstructured data. The product suite ranges across data connection and reporting, predictive analysis, and survey analytics, to create a complete toolbox for impactful analysis. The company defines their approach as Organisational Science, using intelligent analytics technologies with data generated by employees to enable corporations to understand the culture within their organisation and get important insights about how to get the best out of their talent base.

Christian Melby continued: “Hiring the right people and making them thrive is a key value driver and crucial for the performance of any business. Companies worldwide are becoming increasingly aware of this strong connection between commercial success and proper management of employees, and thereby the value potential in being able to perform proper analysis on HR data. Qlearsite is at the forefront of this movement with their Organisational Science approach, helping companies to get a deep understanding of what influences their organisation, its people and how to improve performance. Their state of the art solution allows users to perform complete analysis that answers the questions of what, who and why and to make the right priorities in creating stronger organisations, thereby gaining competitive advantages and avoiding unnecessary costs.”

Ends

For more information, please contact:

Christian Melby, Partner, Summa Equity, +47 (0)958 13 277, christian.melby@summaequity.com

Tommi Unkuri, Partner, Summa Equity, +46 (0)70 508 1196, tommi.unkuri@summaequity.com

Jonas Wohlin, IVBAR, +46 (0)708 55 37 00, jonas.wohlin@ivbar.com

Pål Reinert Bredvei, CEO, Documaster, +47 (0)91 10 28 68, prb@documaster.no

Peter Clark, Founder, Qlearsite, +44 (0)77 8866 5434, peter.clark@qlearsite.com

Alex Borekull, Founder, Qlearsite, +44 (0)78 8779 1645, alex.borekull@qlearsite.com 

About Summa Equity

Summa Equity was formed in 2016 by partners with a shared vision of building a leading specialised private equity firm in the Nordic lower mid-market, positioned to capture the investment opportunity provided by the thematic megatrends expected to drive growth over the long term. The Firm focuses on sectors related to four megatrend driven themes: resource scarcity, energy efficiency, changing demographics and tech-enabled businesses. Summa Equity closed its first fund in February 2017 with commitments of SEK 4.5 billion.

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EQT VI to sell Bureau van Dijk to Moody’s Corporation

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EQT

  • EQT VI to sell Bureau van Dijk, a leading global provider of business intelligence and company information, to Moody’s Corporation for EUR 3.0 billion
  • During EQT VI’s ownership, Bureau van Dijk has gone through a significant transformation with investments in areas including sales, marketing, and product development
  • Strong cultural fit, and solid strategic and industrial logic for combination

EQT VI Limited (“EQT VI”) has entered into an agreement to sell Bureau van Dijk (or the “Company”) to Moody’s Corporation (“Moody’s”) for an enterprise value of EUR 3.0 billion. Bureau van Dijk, operating from its Amsterdam headquarters, captures, treats, standardizes, and distributes the world’s richest private company dataset, with coverage of more than 220 million companies. Over some 30 years, the Company has built partnerships with over 160 independent information providers, creating a platform that connects customers with data, to address a wide range of business challenges.

EQT VI acquired Bureau van Dijk in September 2014 with a mission to further expand its leading market position and accelerate growth. The Company has undergone a significant transformation under EQT VI’’s ownership through several key initiatives:

– Development of the organisational structure to prepare for further growth

– Investments in the sales organization, including the introduction of a matrix sales structure, implementation of a global CRM system, and expansion of the salesforce

– Strong focus on the development of new products and continued improvement of existing ones, e.g. the launch of a new user interface

– Substantial investments in marketing and corporate branding

The growth initiatives during EQT VI’s ownership have resulted in strong financial performance, with Bureau van Dijk generating revenues of EUR 258 million and EBITDA of EUR 132 million in 2016.

“Bureau van Dijk has continued to strengthen its market leading position while accelerating financial growth. This development exemplifies EQT’s industrial and growth-focused approach, aimed at supporting management teams in making very good companies even better. The journey continues for Bureau van Dijk – this transaction has a compelling strategic rationale and provides great opportunities for the future. The management team has done an impressive job and we look forward to seeing Bureau van Dijk continue to develop as a part of Moody’s”, says Kristiaan Nieuwenburg, Partner at EQT Partners and Investment Advisor to the EQT VI fund.

“Over the past three years we have been on an exciting and transformational journey with the support of EQT and their industrial experts. We are now delighted to join forces with Moody’s and continue to develop our business”, says Mark Schwerzel, Deputy CEO of Bureau van Dijk.

Moody’s Corporation is the parent company of Moody’s Analytics, which offers leading-edge software, advisory services and research for credit and economic analysis and financial risk management, and Moody’s Investors Service, which provides credit ratings and research covering debt instruments and securities.

The agreement is subject to customary anti-trust clearance and the transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2017.

The sellers were represented by Quayle Munro and J.P. Morgan.

Contacts
Kristiaan Nieuwenburg, Partner at EQT Partners, Investment Advisor to EQT VI, +31 20 262 40 01
EQT Press Office, +46 8 506 55 334, press@eqtpartners.com

About EQT
EQT is a leading alternative investments firm with approximately EUR 35 billion in raised capital across 22 funds. EQT funds have portfolio companies in Europe, Asia and the US with total sales of more than EUR 19 billion and approximately 110,000 employees. EQT works with portfolio companies to achieve sustainable growth, operational excellence and market leadership.

More information: www.eqtpartners.com

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Nordic Capital Fund VIII and Novo A/S announce the closing of the acquisition of ERT

Nordic Capital Logo

Following approval by the antitrust authorities in the US and Europe, Nordic Capital Fund VIII, (“Nordic Capital”), and Novo A/S today announce the closing of the acquisition of ERT from Genstar Capital for an enterprise value of USD 1.8 bn. Nordic Capital Fund VIII will control 70% of the institutional equity and Novo A/S will hold the remaining 30%.

With 1,300 employees world-wide and with its headquarters in Philadelphia USA, ERT is a global leading provider of advanced high-quality electronic data collection solutions for clinical development programs. Their systems are widely used by pharmaceutical and biotech companies innovating drug and device therapies to optimize clinical trial management, and to document safety and efficacy clinical outcomes data.

Since its inception in 1972, ERT has developed from a technology start-up to a company that today supports the conduct of more than 1,500 clinical trials annually. This is achieved through the compilation of a variety of clinical outcome data from more than 2.7 million patients, in strict accordance with the standards defined by the major regulatory agencies.

Jim Corrigan, President and Chief Executive Officer of ERT said, “The acquisition of ERT by Nordic Capital Fund VIII and Novo A/S provides a new substantial financial and operational backing that will enable us to grow and expand the company’s activities further. The new ownership will fast-forward our development plans and deepen our service offerings, to meet the evolving needs of our customers.”

Building on ERT’s leading technology stronghold and operational performance within clinical outcomes data capture, analysis and reporting, the company’s management and new owners are aiming to pursue further add-on investments to expand the operational platform of ERT in the years to come.

Jonas Agnblad, Partner, NC Advisory AB, advisor to the Nordic Capital Funds commented, “Nordic Capital identified ERT as a very attractive investment opportunity in the eClinical market.It has deep insights into the clinical development process, an attractive technical platform and an outstanding competitive position.Nordic Capital is pleased to partner with Novo A/S to acquire ERT, given their dedicated life-science investment focus. Together, we are planning to invest in the company’s service offerings and operational footprint in the years to come.”

Dr. Raj Shah, Partner, NC Advisory (UK) LLP, advisor to the Nordic Capital Funds said “We are impressed by the investments made in the technical platform as well as management’s overall development of ERT as a trusted healthcare service partner and the leading healthcare technology provider. Their leadership position in the attractive eCOA market, supported by similar strong positions in Cardiac Safety and Respiratory Solutions, provides a robust platform for future growth”.

Commenting on the investment in ERT, Michael Shalmi, Head of Large Investments in Novo A/S said, “We are pleased to partner with Nordic Capital Fund VIII for the joint ownership and development of ERT, given their extensive health care related buy-out experience and excellent life science investment track record. The many growth options available to ERT, organically as well as by acquisitions, represent exciting investment opportunities which we look forward to pursuing in our partnership with Nordic Capital Fund VIII and the management of ERT”.

 

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