Tag Archives: Information technology

Hexagon appoints new Chief Strategy Officer

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Hexagon

Hexagon, a leading global provider of information technology solutions, today announced the appointment of Ben Maslen as Hexagon’s Chief Strategy Officer (CSO). As CSO, Mr. Maslen will be responsible for the development and execution of strategic initiatives to support Hexagon’s long-term growth and shareholder value.

Mr. Maslen has over 15 years of experience in the capital markets industry including being co-head of the European Capital Goods equity research team at Morgan Stanley. Prior to Morgan Stanley, he was an equity analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers.

Mr. Maslen will officially assume the role of CSO in the summer of 2017 as part of Hexagon’s group management team, reporting to the President and CEO.

For further information, please contact:
Maria Luthstrom, Investor Relations Manager, Hexagon AB , +46 8 601 26 27, ir@hexagon.com
Kristin Christensen , Chief Marketing Officer, Hexagon AB , +1 404 554 0972, media@hexagon.com

Hexagon is a leading global provider of information technology solutions that drive productivity and quality across geospatial and industrial landscapes.

Hexagon’s solutions integrate sensors, software, domain knowledge and customer workflows into intelligent information ecosystems that deliver actionable information. They are used in a broad range of vital industries.

Hexagon (Nasdaq Stockholm: HEXA B) has approximately 18,000 employees in 50 countries and net sales of approximately 3.1bn EUR. Learn more at hexagon.com and follow us @HexagonAB.

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Epiris announces the sale of TechInsights

Epiris is pleased to announce that its portfolio company AXIO Group (“AXIO”) has agreed the sale of TechInsights, a leading intellectual property and technology services provider, to Oakley Capital. The sale, which is expected to complete in the next two weeks, is the seventh and final major realisation from AXIO’s portfolio and will conclude what has been an exceptional investment for Epiris and its investors.

Based on today’s exchange rates, Electra Private Equity PLC (“Electra”) will receive proceeds from AXIO of £26 million. The sale will increase the total cash proceeds received by Electra from its investment in AXIO to £455 million, equivalent to 5.0x original cost, and an IRR of 76%.

Based in Ottawa, Canada, TechInsights is the global leader in intellectual property consulting, patent brokerage and technical reverse engineering. TechInsights helps patent owners maximize the value of their patents through portfolio assessment, advising on strategic options, licensing and litigation support. In 2016 the business was combined with Chipworks, the leader in the intellectual property and technology services market, creating the clear global leader in advanced technology intelligence and technology founded patent advisory services.

Alex Cooper-Evans, Partner at Epiris, said:

“We are delighted to have agreed the final sale from the AXIO group of companies which will conclude what has been an outstanding investment for our investors, delivering an unlevered return of 5x cost and an IRR of 76%.

“The AXIO investment is a terrific example of the Epiris strategy at work. We bought a complex group of assets before transforming them with a programme of strategic and operational focus as well as investment in organic and M&A-led growth. This created a portfolio of high-performance growth businesses which has proven to be extremely attractive to trade and financial buyers alike.

“Henry Elkington and the rest of the AXIO management team have done an exceptional job in delivering this return and we look forward to finding another opportunity to work together.”

Henry Elkington, CEO of AXIO Group, said:

“We are delighted to have brought this investment to a successful conclusion. I speak for the whole management team in saying that this outcome would not have been possible without Epiris, whose vision and support have been invaluable.”

Alex Fortescue and Alex Cooper-Evans are responsible for the investment in AXIO Group.

Epiris refers to Epiris Managers LLP acting on behalf of its clients, including Electra Private Equity PLC.

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Investment Plan for Europe: EIB supports MariaDB with financing for accelerated growth

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The European Investment Bank (EIB) announced a EUR 25m funding of MariaDB, the company behind the fastest growing Open Source database, to support the company’s next stage of growth and database innovation. This EIB operation is guaranteed under the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), a key element of the European Commission’s Investment Plan for Europe, aiming at reviving investment in strategic projects around Europe.

This is the EIB’s first financing for MariaDB. The EIB funding will be used to further product innovation for MariaDB’s expanding global enterprise client base and increase its sales and marketing teams in Europe, America, and Asia. Specifically, within Europe, the company will expand its European operations with new engineering hires in Helsinki.

Industry analysts provide different estimates on the database market, but they agree that it is in the midst of a massive shakeup that will disrupt established legacy vendors as businesses around the world look to adopt modern, open source databases. Companies like Telefonica, DBS Bank, Teleplan and more are re-architecting their infrastructure to reduce costs and modernize their business.

Industry estimates on the adoption of open source and growth of the database market include:

  • IDC expects the overall database market to reach $50 billion by 2017, up from $40 billion in 2015, according to their worldwide database forecast.*
  • Gartner estimates that more than 70 percent of new in-house applications will be developed on open source databases, while 50 percent of existing commercial databases will convert to open source by 2018.**
  • The popularity of open source database systems has increased from 35 percent four years ago to a new record high of 46 percent according to DB-engines, which tracks database popularity.

Supporting Quotes:

EIB Vice-President Ambroise Fayolle, whose responsibilities include EFSI and innovation, said: “We are pleased to be partnering with MariaDB in this breakthrough operation as it will enable the EU bank to support a European software company particularly strong in innovation and with significant growth potential. This is also what the Investment Plan for Europe is about: strengthening Europe’s global competitiveness by supporting high-skilled employment opportunities and enhancing Europe’s position as a major technology supplier.”

Michael Howard, CEO of MariaDB Corporation, said: “The investment from the EIB accelerates our ability to expand our product capabilities and continue to develop features that make MariaDB the easiest to use, the easiest to extend and the easiest to deploy in any environment. This funding is part of a multi-step strategy to strengthen MariaDB across Europe, America and Asia, and will help foster the next phase of growth for the company.”

European Commission Vice-President Jyrki Katainen, responsible for Jobs, Growth, Investment and Competitiveness, said: “Developing new, innovative products requires sustained investment. I am delighted that the Investment Plan is unlocking finance to facilitate MariaDB’s development programme, that includes expanding their engineering team as well as increasing international sales and marketing operations. Focus on innovation and research as well as reaching out to new markets will help the company succeed in a highly competitive market.”

 

Background information:

The European Investment Bank (EIB) is the long-term lending institution of the European Union owned by its Member States. It makes long-term finance available for sound investment in order to contribute towards EU policy goals. In 2016 the EIB fostered projects in Finland with financing totalling EUR 2.22bn – an all-time record high for EIB commitment in Finland.

The Investment Plan for Europe, the so-called Juncker Plan, is one of President Jean-Claude Juncker’s top priorities. It focuses on boosting European investments to create jobs and growth by making smarter use of new and existing financial resources, removing obstacles to investment and providing visibility and technical assistance to investment projects.

The European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI) is the central pillar of the Investment Plan. It provides a first loss guarantee, allowing the EIB to invest in more, often riskier, projects. The EFSI is already showing concrete results. The projects and agreements approved for financing under the EFSI so far are expected to mobilise over EUR 183 billion in total investments and support over 427,000 SMEs across all 28 Member States.

In September 2016, President Juncker proposed to extend the EFSI by increasing its firepower and duration as well as reinforcing its strengths. You can find the latest EFSI figures by sector and by country here.

MariaDB
MariaDB Corporation is the company behind MariaDB, the fastest growing Open Source database. MariaDB is the default in major Linux distributions like Red Hat, Ubuntu and SUSE, which in total reaches more than 60 million. MariaDB can be deployed in a hybrid, public or private cloud with technologies like Docker, Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services and OpenStack. Over the past year, the company expanded its product portfolio to include MariaDB MaxScale and MariaDB ColumnStore, enabling a broader range of use cases across the enterprise. MariaDB, with its commitment to community innovation and customer success, is the leading database preferred by developers and trusted by enterprises.

*IDC: Worldwide Relational Database Management Systems Forecast, 2015.
**Gartner: Emerging Technology Trends Create Opportunities for DBMS Cost Optimization, April 21, 2016.

Press contacts:

EIB:
Alicja Chytla, a.chytla@eib.org, tel.: +352 4379 88233
Website: www.eib.org/press – Press Office: +352 4379 21000 – press@eib.org
Follow us on Twitter @eib

MariaDB
Cindy Clement
+1 303 241 4818
mailto:mariadb@clementpeterson.co
Website: https://mariadb.com
Follow us on Twitter: @mariadb

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Bregal Unternehmerkapital supports the online printing platform Helloprint to accelerate its growth

Bregal unternehmerkapital

The European online printing market is growing and will continue to win significant market share from offline competitors in the years to come. Rotterdam-based Helloprint is a key player in the industry and one of Europe’s fastest growing online platforms, offering more than 2,000 products via its network of over 100 international printers. To increasingly benefit from the positive market development, Helloprint has entered into a long-term partnership with Bregal Unternehmerkapital and Project A, the Berlin-based venture capital investor, who are investing several million euros to acquire a minority stake in Helloprint via their holding Onlineprinters.

This investment will provide Helloprint with additional financial and strategic resources to continue accelerating its growth and to expand its platform business more rapidly. Currently, Helloprint provides printed products to more than 150,000 customers in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy, the UK, Spain, Germany and Ireland.

Helloprint will use the injection of capital to enhance its IT systems, grow its team and implement new customer acquisition efforts. Thanks to the company’s service-oriented platform model, Helloprint is able to grow without major capex investments. The new funding follows a seed financing round providing start-up capital and several million euros in series A financing by private investors.

Bregal is excited to have found another strong partner in a very promising market and is looking forward to actively supporting Helloprint in its growth ambitions.

Press contact:

IRA WÜLFING KOMMUNIKATION
Dr. Reinhard Saller
Phone: +49 89 2000 30-30
bregal@wuelfing-kommunikation.de

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Metronet (UK) targets superfast London growth with acquisition of Venus Business Communications

Metronet

Metronet (UK), the UK’s fastest growing connectivity and internet infrastructure provider, backed by mid-market private equity firm Livingbridge, today announces its acquisition of Venus Business Communications, a leading high growth fibre network provider.

The acquisition of Venus follows Metronet (UK)’s £47.5m purchase of leading internet infrastructure and hosting company M247 in October 2016. Venus will provide the Group with access to the strategically important London market as it seeks to build a national disruptive platform with ‘last mile’ control, faster connectivity and communications to end users and a powerful transit network across Europe.

Venus will add six new strategically important datacentres to the Group’s network so that, following the acquisition, Metronet (UK)’s network is now connected to all key strategic UK data centre locations as well as 14 of the world’s largest and most important Internet Exchanges.

Founded in 2005 by telecoms entrepreneurs Brian Iddon and Justin Keery, Venus covers all of central London and the City, providing superfast, high speed fibre at up to 10 gigabit/sec, almost 100 times quicker than the leading alternative broadband connection. Venus is delivering revenues of £7.8m and supplies companies across a range of sectors including design, media, broadcast and financial services who place a particularly high value on low latency communications.

Metronet (UK) operates the most advanced hybrid ISP network in the UK and, by combining its unique offering of wireless and wired technology, is able to offer scalable connectivity solutions that are typically implemented five times quicker than traditional fibre and copper based services. As an organisation, it prides itself on connecting businesses through innovative, integrated technology for enhanced productivity. It does this through a number of complementary products and services, including; connectivity, hosting, voice and security; enabling businesses to access the tools they need to succeed on a 24/seven basis.

The combined Group will now employ around 230 people across six sites including Manchester, Newcastle, London and Bucharest. It will support almost 34,000 customers across 92 countries, from SMEs to Enterprise clients including Intu, On The Beach, Sofology and ao.com, and deliver revenues of nearly £50m.

Livingbridge first invested in Metronet (UK) in June 2014 as part of a £45m secondary buyout of the firm. Follow on funding to support the Group’s acquisition strategy and the investment in Venus has been made by the Livingbridge 5 fund.

Matthew Caffrey, Partner at Livingbridge, said:
“The acquisition of Venus neatly complements Metronet’s existing capabilities and will enable the business to build a world class wireless network in London on top of Venus’ core transit and last mile fibre capability. Metronet’s national services now include connectivity applications across the wireless and fibre spectrums as well as voice, security and hosting and we are very excited about the Group’s continued growth prospects.”

Lee Perkins, Chief Executive at Metronet (UK), said:
“Venus is a fantastic business which has established itself as a leading player in the London market thanks to its market leading levels of speed and reliability. Just as importantly, Venus has the same entrepreneurial and customer-centric culture as us so I have no doubt that it will be an excellent fit with our business.”

Brian Iddon, Director and Founder at Venus, said:
“I am immensely proud of the business we have built over the past 12 years and am excited about what we will be able to achieve as part of the Group’s wider offer. I have known Lee and the team for a number of years and feel that Metronet are the perfect fit for us as we look to build on the strong momentum we have generated to date.”

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Onlineprinters to Acquire Leading UK Online Printer Solopress

Bregal unternehmerkapital

Investment in strongly growing UK market

Essex / Neustadt a. d. Aisch – Onlineprinters, one of Europe’s largest B2B online printing companies, is about to acquire Solopress, a leading player in the UK online printing market. Solopress was founded in 2004 and has grown significantly in recent years reaching 225 employees in 2016. With “print delivered tomorrow” Solopress is uniquely positioned to fulfil customer demand for speed and quality. Solopress’ founders Aron Priest and Andy Smith will continue to lead Solopress as Managing Directors and become shareholders of Onlineprinters Group. Last year Bregal Unternehmerkapital became the new majority shareholder of Onlineprinters partnering with Project A and founder Walter Meyer to lead the company to its next phase of growth.

The parties involved in the acquisition have agreed not to disclose details of the transaction.

Onlineprinters was one of the First Movers in online printing, and in 2016 produced over 2.1 billion printed items. Having expanded its clientele by 100,000 new customers in 2016, the company welcomed its 600,000th customer in January 2017 and currently has more than 650 employees. Onlineprinters CEO Dr. Michael Fries commented about the deal, “We are glad that Solopress with its premier position in the UK market will become part of the Onlineprinters Group. The experience of the founders Aron Priest and Andy Smith will be instrumental in developing our UK business and helping to further develop Onlineprinters as a European leader in online printing.”

“With Onlineprinters we have found a partner who is one of the pre-eminent international players within the European online printing sector. The Onlineprinters Group provides the right framework to continue the successful development of Solopress,” says Solopress’ Co-Founder Aron Priest.

Growth strategy

The UK is one of the major European printing markets which has recently begun to accelerate in the transition to online print. “With Solopress we have a partner with a well established brand in the UK, a broad customer base, knowledge of the market and an efficient production facility, with high quality standards. The acquisition of Solopress strengthens the market position of Onlineprinters as one of Europe’s Top-5 online print providers,” explains Dr. Michael Fries.

Award winning quality and service

Solopress has grown year-on-year and won seven prestigious awards, including ‘Business of the Year’ and ‘Business to Business of the Year’. Onlineprinters was awarded for excellent customer service several times in the past few years and has earned many commendations by renowned media outlets.

About Onlineprinters

Onlineprinters GmbH is one of Europe’s top online print providers. In line with the motto “Print simply online!“ the company sells printed products to 600,000 customers in 30 European countries through its 16 web shops. Internationally, the company is known under the brand name “Onlineprinters“; in Germany it operates under the name “diedruckerei.de“. The product range comprises of 1,400 printed products from business cards, stationery and flyers to catalogues, brochures and large-format advertising systems. The formula to successfully produce customised prints in terms of Industry 4.0 rests on three pillars: online sales, fully integrated production from ordering to shipping and gang run printing. The latter uses so-called combined forms to collectively produce print jobs, therefore minimising costs and reducing the environmental impact. Selected products allow customers to choose the option of same day printing (produced on the same working day), overnight delivery, climate neutral production and custom size specification. Onlineprinters GmbH employs 650 staff and produces over two billion printed items per year.

About Solopress

Solopress is one of the UKs largest independent online printers, offering a wide range of business related printed products, including business cards, leaflets, brochures, posters and banners. With the maxim “Print Delivered Tomorrow” the company ships over 85% of its print jobs within 24 hours of being ordered. Last year alone Solopress produced over 300,000 online orders, and hit the 1,000,000th order milestone in October 2016. Within Solopress’ two sites covering more than 63,000 sq ft. the company boasts an impressive plant list including; 7 Heidelberg Speedmasters, 5 Xerox iGens and 9 Polar guillotines. These machines combined with an internally developed workflow and superb customer service (rated Excellent on Trustpilot with over 8,500 reviews) have seen Solopress achieve double digit growth for twelve consecutive years.

About Bregal Unternehmerkapital

Bregal Unternehmerkapital is part of a family-owned business that has been built up over generations. Its investment activity is based on long-term commitment and independent of developments in the financial markets. Bregal Unternehmerkapital identifies companies, with strong management teams, that are regarded as market leaders or “hidden champions” in their particular segment. Flexible financing and transaction structures enable it to acquire both minority and majority stakes. In doing so, Bregal Unternehmerkapital is also able to handle complex industry spin-offs, management buy-outs and succession situations in a sensitive, non-dogmatic manner. Bregal Unternehmerkapital aims to help companies to achieve a sustained improvement in sales and profitability, and provides them with capital, proven financial expertise and access to a broad network of entrepreneurs and industry experts.

About Project A

Project A is an operational VC that provides its ventures with capital, an extensive network and exclusive access to a wide range of operational expertise. The Berlin-based investor makes use of the €260m in assets under its management to back early-stage companies in the digital technology space. With its unique organizational structure featuring 100 operational experts, Project A offers its portfolio companies hands-on support in the areas of IT, Marketing & Brand Building, Business Intelligence, Sales and Recruiting. The portfolio includes companies such as Catawiki, WorldRemit, Tictail, Contorion, nu3, Lostmy.name and ZenMate. More about Project A on www.project-a.com  and on our blog insights.project-a.com.

Press contact Onlineprinters

Onlineprinters GmbH
Patrick Piecha
Head of Press & Public Relations
Phone:    +49 9161 6209807
+49 174 3077250
press@onlineprinters.com
www.onlineprinters.co.uk

Press contact Solopress

Solopress
Julia Murray
Digital Marketing Manager
Phone:    +44 1702 460047
+44 7702 202580
press@solopress.com
www.solopress.com

Press contact Bregal Unternehmerkapital

IRA WÜLFING KOMMUNIKATION GmbH
Dr Reinhard Saller / Florian Bergmann
Phone:      +49 89 2000 30-30
bregal@wuelfing-kommunikation.de

Press contact Project A

Project A
Konstanze Pflüger
Corporate Communications
Phone:      +49 30 340 606 321
konstanze.pflueger@project-a.com
www.project-a.com

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Data Respons Acquires remaining 50% of TechPeople A/S

TechPeople A/S, a Danish consultancy specialist within application development, architecture and system designs as well as embedded solutions and IoT, is expected to become a fully owned subsidiary of Data Respons within 2 weeks.

“Data Respons is continuing its growth through M&A by acquiring TechPeople A/S, a Danish company we have followed closely through 50% ownership over the last 5 years. Their development and performance were contributing factors to reach full ownership. In addition to financial synergies, joint forces going forward increases our ability to take advantage of the digitalization megatrend”, says Narve Reiten, Deal Partner at Reiten & Co.

Reiten started investing in 1996 with capital from local institutional investors and family offices. Over the years Reiten have managed seven funds, of which currently three are active.

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Cherwell Software Secures $50 Million Investment from KKR to Further Advance Service Management Leadership

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COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo., Feb. 27, 2017 — Cherwell Software, LLC, a leading provider of IT service management (ITSM) solutions, announced today that it has secured $50 million in funding from KKR, a global investment firm. KKR is making the investment through its Next Generation Technology Fund, which focuses on investments in software, security, Internet, digital media, and information services.

KKR joins existing Cherwell investor, Insight Venture Partners, which has made a series of investments beginning in 2012. With the support of KKR’s funding, Cherwell will accelerate research and development and make strategic investments aimed at broadening and deepening its portfolio of IT and enterprise service management offerings.

Vini Letteri, a member of KKR’s Technology, Media & Telecommunications industry team, will be joining Cherwell’s board of managers.

“The IT service management market is a large and rapidly growing sector undergoing a period of disruption as new, emerging technologies replace older legacy systems. With IT teams’ increasing importance within organizations, ensuring there is no interruption to IT services and that customer satisfaction is high are paramount to any business,” said Vini Letteri, Director, KKR. “Since its founding, Cherwell has been entirely customer-centric in its focus and is led by a seasoned, passionate, and industry-leading management team. Its platform provides unparalleled value and the ultimate flexibility to its customers to operate in any industry and in any environment—on premises, cloud, or hybrid. We are really pleased to partner with them to help accelerate Cherwell’s future growth and leadership in this dynamic industry.”

Named by IDC as the fastest growing vendor in its 2015 Worldwide Problem Management Software Market Shares report, Cherwell has become a force multiplier for IT organizations that need to become more innovative and agile, while reducing the total cost of ownership (TCO) of their service management initiatives. The ITSM market is widely known for expensive, inflexible tools supplied by vendors whose business practices are characterized by confusing licensing models and punitive pricing.

Cherwell has driven strong growth in the ITSM market by delivering:

  • A codeless platform that enables rapid solution customization and hassle-free upgrades
  • A transparent and straightforward concurrent licensing model, along with predictable, all-inclusive pricing
  • A “customers first” philosophy which has resulted in 98%+ customer satisfaction rate

“IT teams are increasingly abandoning their legacy service management tools in favor of powerful, modern, and agile solutions that empower them to confidently tackle business challenges and opportunities,” said Craig Harper, Chief Executive Officer of Cherwell. “KKR’s investment in Cherwell is validation that our core principles and areas of focus will continue to drive phenomenal growth and fulfill our goal of being the best service management solution on the planet.”

The KKR investment follows a particularly strong 2016 for Cherwell. 2016 highlights included:

  • Record bookings and a record number of new customers, including marquis brands across transportation, financial services, healthcare, retail, government, manufacturing, and higher education
  • Acquisition of Advanced Marketplace, an IT consulting firm specializing in development of business solutions for the Cherwell® Service Management platform, signaling Cherwell’s commitment to accelerate its delivery of enterprise service management solutions
  • Appointment of Craig Harper as Cherwell’s Chief Executive Officer; and Patrick Malaperiman, Vice President, EMEA
  • Establishment of strategic partnerships with Microsoft® Azure® and Amazon Web Services (AWS), demonstrating Cherwell’s continued commitment to customer choice through flexible deployment options including on-premises, SaaS hosted by Cherwell, or hosted on the public cloud—and the ability to switch any time at no cost

“Cherwell’s continued double digit market share growth can be attributed to the flexible and competitive licensing, deployment, and pricing options of its platform,” said Robert Young, Research Director, ITSM and Client Virtualization Software, IDC. “Likewise, with the company’s recent product enhancements in the performance and scalability of its platform, as well as public cloud hosting options and integrations, IDC believes that Cherwell is well positioned to increase its enterprise adoption and maintain an aggressive growth trajectory.”

About Cherwell Software

A global leader in IT and enterprise service management, Cherwell Software empowers IT to lead through the use of powerful and intuitive technology that enables better, faster, and more affordable innovation. The Cherwell® Service Management platform is built from the ground up with a unique codeless architecture that enables rapid time to value, infinite flexibility, and frictionless upgrades every time—at a fraction of the cost and complexity of legacy solutions. Because of Cherwell’s focus on delivering solutions that are easy to configure, customize, and use, IT organizations extend the Cherwell platform to solve a wide range of IT and business problems. With an unwavering commitment to putting customers first and being easy to do business with, Cherwell enjoys 98%+ customer satisfaction. Cherwell has a global network of expert partners serving customers in more than 40 countries. Corporate headquarters are in Colorado, USA, with global offices in the United Kingdom, Germany and Australia.

About KKR

KKR is a leading global investment firm that manages investments across multiple asset classes including private equity, energy, infrastructure, real estate, credit and hedge funds. KKR aims to generate attractive investment returns by following a patient and disciplined investment approach, employing world‐class people, and driving growth and value creation at the asset level. KKR invests its own capital alongside its partners’ capital and brings opportunities to others through its capital markets business. References to KKR’s investments may include the activities of its sponsored funds. For additional information about KKR & Co. L.P. (NYSE:KKR), please visit KKR’s website at www.kkr.com and follow us on Twitter @KKR_Co or #KKRTMTGrowth for related news on KKR’s TMT platform.

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Summa Equity acquires Lin Education

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Summa Equity has acquired Linfre Education AB from the founder and a handful of private investors. The founder and CEO Josef Lind will reinvest the majority of his proceeds, and the management team will also invest alongside Summa Equity.

Tommi Unkuri, Partner at Summa Equity, said: “We are very excited about concluding Summa Equity’ third investment, and the first one within the investment theme Changing Demographics. This investment also fits within another of our four themes, Tech-enabled business, where Education is a core segment. Through Lin Education we will contribute to the digitalisation of the Swedish educational system. In a time when learning is more important than ever, this is a field offering important challenges, but also huge opportunities. Being part of innovative solutions to some of the pressing challenges of our time, is a fundament in Summa Equity’s investment philosophy”.

Josef Lind, Founder and CEO of Lin Education, said: “We are very pleased to have Summa Equity as our new majority owner and partner, as this will help Lin Education take the next steps in our development. We are looking forward to a collaboration whereby we will strengthen our offering, press ahead to lead the development in educational content, and further develop our organisation. In Summa Equity we find a fit not only for our business, but also for our people and stakeholders.”

Lin Education was founded in 2007 by Josef Lind, and today has several hundred thousand digital tools and IT hardware (i.e. computers, laptops, tablets, etc.) in schools and preschools all over Sweden. Lin Education also offers learning, development and digitalisation training for its customers. Many thousand people are using the Lin Education’s proprietary digital content tools for learning. The company has some 90 employees working out of offices in Gothenburg, Stockholm, Malmö, Karlstad and Umeå. Revenue was SEK 569m in 2016.

Summa Equity will support the continued development of Lin Education and assist the Company in further growth through investments to develop existing as well as new products. Lin Education is expected to benefit from the trend towards increasing digitalisation of learning, in schools and in other environments.

Ends

For more information, please contact:

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

Josef Lind, CEO, Lin Education, +46) 704 385 827, josef.lind@lineducation.se

About Lin Education

Lin Education is a Swedish Education Technology company founded in 2007 as distributor of IT hardware (i.e. computers, laptops, tablets) to Swedish schools. The Company has since also expanded into segments for digital content, training and supplementary services for a digital learning environment, and today has a position as a leader in the Swedish market for digitalisation of the educational system. Lin Education has demonstrated strong double digit revenue growth annually over the past three years.

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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Gimv leads EUR 10.3 million follow-on round to accelerate Itineris’ international growth

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GIMV

Gimv leads EUR 10.3 million follow-on round to accelerate Itineris’ international growth

Gimv and Gimv managed Gimv Arkiv Tech Fund II jointly invest EUR 7.8 million in Itineris (www.itineris.net), a Belgian software solutions company that has developed UMAX, a Microsoft-based software solution managing the meter-to-cash processes at utility companies. Next to Gimv, other existing investors PMV and CEO-founder Edgard Vermeersch jointly put EUR 2.5 million on top, lifting the total financing round to EUR 10.3 million.

With four clients in the US under contract, a strengthened leadership for the UMAX North American business, a geographical extension of its focus in Europe with several new customer wins and revenues topping EUR 43 million, 2016 was a key year for Itineris.

The funds will be used to further support the growth of the company. Next to investing in the improvement of its UMAX-solution for its existing customers, and extending its reach with new customers in both Europe and North-America, the company is also considering some acquisition opportunities.

After earlier financings in November 2013 and May 2015, this is the third investment round of Itineris in which Gimv acts as lead investor. It clearly shows Gimv’s willingness to provide larger financing tickets to ambitious entrepreneurs willing to scale up and accelerate the growth of their company in order to become  leading in their sector.

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