Senior Partners in EV Private Equity, Rune Jensen and Per Arne Jensen, who
established the Norwegian Private Equity fund manager Progressus in 2006, sold the Progressus portfolio company Viju to the Dutch-German Private Equity firm Avedon Capital Partners.

Under Progressus active stewardship Viju has grown its revenues from NOK 80 million to more than NOK 800 million through strong organic and acquisitive growth. Number of employees have grown from 25 to 280 and number of offices from 1 small office in Stavanger to 11 across Norway, UK, USA, Singapore and Malaysia.

Avedon Capital Partners acquires VisionsConnected and Viju to create a leading global provider of video conferencing, audiovisual and collaboration solutions

The ambition for the new combined company is to build a leading global visual collaboration company specializing in designing, installing, servicing and supporting physical and virtual meeting environments for global customers with a strategic need for videoconferencing, collaboration and audiovisual solutions.

The combined company today serves corporate and public customers in about 100 countries. It will have its official headquarter in Amsterdam, the Netherlands and will continue to serve customers from multiple office locations throughout EMEA, USA & APAC. A new brand, that reflects the evolution of these two reputable businesses into an integrated global organization, is expected to be launched in early 2018.

Rune Jensen (Progressus Private Equity, majority owner Viju): “Under our ownership, Viju has tenfolded revenues and established offices around the globe. We look forward to following the new company’s continued journey, and believe Avedon is very well positioned to take it to the next level”

About Viju
Viju is a global visual communications specialist, whose aim is to transform the way people communicate and collaborate in the workplace. Their solutions and services include video conferencing, audio visual integration and unified communications and collaboration.

www.vijugroup.com

About VisionsConnected
VisionsConnected is a global visual collaboration specialist on a mission to change the way people collaborate. They create and deliver cloud-based, high quality, secure and user-friendly video conferencing services to customers in over 120 countries.


www.visionsconnected.com

About Avedon Capital Partners
Avedon Capital Partners is an investor passionate about supporting outstanding entrepreneurs and management teams of growth companies to realize their ambitions together. It is located in Amsterdam (NL) and Düsseldorf (GER). Avedon focuses on niches within four sectors: Software & Technology, Business Services, Industry & Engineering, and Consumer & Leisure. Since it was established, the team has invested in over 20 growth capital transactions and has achieved a strong track record of growth

www.avedoncapital.com

About Progressus

Progressus is a private equity company based in Stavanger, Norway,  providing capital and competence to growth companies in the oil and gas and technology sectors. In 2015 Progressus Management joined Energy Ventures to form EV Private Equity.

www.evpe.com

In the issue, totaling over 6 million will also participate including Kichi Invest, the game company Paradox Interactive CEO Fredrik Wester is the majority shareholder, and Bo Mattsson, the serial entrepreneur who founded the company Cint, Mangold Fondkommission, EuroTrader and Nettrader.

Referanza has developed a tool which helps the company to get their satisfied customers to easily recommend their positive experiences and products they like to their friends in social media. The companies will then have the real, personal, credible trial and will thus away from the problems that Trustpilot and recommendation sites have false positive reviews. And while driving it on sale. Verified Customer Rating is magical content and gold worth of business because consumers tend to rely more on their friends’ recommendations than on traditional advertising.

There are a variety of solutions that are reminiscent of the Referanza make such referral marketing solutions that focus on satisfied customers to tell their friends about a product or service in social media, and digital survey solutions (NPS) where customer feedback is collected to find out what customers thought. But no one takes a structured approach to be on the positive customer experiences that people spread in social media. USP of Referanza lies in the self-service tools that they developed Referanzas where customers can see the entire flow, for example, through which social channels to their customers and their friends spread their positive reviews, which customers are most likely to share how great social influence of different customers, the friends that click like, which customers recommend and what they recommend (and thus is a new lead)

Every year several billion customer experiences. Referanzas product will be used in an endless variety of verticals which was making the market very large. It has initially chosen to focus on clients in the entertainment, such as cinema, theater, stand-up and sports.

We see a strong increase in the use of our platform, primarily from companies in the ticketing and entertainment industry, where hundreds of thousands of consumers already passed our mobile Flow, says Joakim Turesson, chief executive and co-founder of Referanza.Vi has a very high response rate and high viral spread is partly because that our tools are very easy to use, and we ask our customers in real time, ie immediately after the customer has the experience and the most full of it.

Paris, 27 June 2017

– Ardian, the independent private equity company,today announces its acquisition of a minority stake in T2O media, the leading independent digital media agency in Spain.

Founded in 2004 by current CEO Oscar Alonso and CIO Tomas Hernandez, T2O media has cemented its status as Spain’s premier independent digital agency. In addition to its original locations in Madrid and Barcelona, the company has opened offices in Milan, Trento, Mexico City and, most recently, Houston, which it opened in 2016. The agency’s clients include top-tier Spanish companies active in the travel industry, including Barceló Hotel Group, Bahia Principe and Palladium, as well as financial institutions, such as Aegon, Axa and Unicredit.

Óscar Alonso, CEO of T2O media, said: ‘After acquiring Webperformance in Italy and opening our new office in the United States, we wanted to continue this development phase with support from a leading partner which understands the dynamics of our market and is capable of helping us seize opportunities. Given its expertise in the sector and its track record, Ardian Growth was the natural choice as the partner to work with us.’ In addition to the network and expertise Ardian can provide to support growing companies, this partnership will help the management team consolidate its position in Southern Europe and underwrite its ambitions of helping advertisers reach Spanish-speaking markets in Mexico and the United States. In this rapidly expanding industry, T2O media is one of the few independent agencies to have successfullypenetrated the Mexican market while at the same time drawing on its digital expertise to attract North American clients.

Bertrand Schapiro, Senior Investment Manager at Ardian Growth, added: ‘In the constantly evolving agency market, T2O media has cemented its leading position in Spain. The team has the reputation and the ambition to become a top international player for brands looking to reach the Spanish-speaking market in Europe and LATAM.’

Geoffroy de La Grandière, Director of Ardian Growth, added: ‘After making several investments in Italy,our first push into Spain solidifies our positioning as a premier growth equity player in France and Southern Europe.’

ABOUT T2O MEDIA

T2O media is a Digital Media Agency founded in 2004,that designs and manages marketing and communication strategies with a results orientated approach (Paid, Owned, Earned Media, relying always on Technology). His team has achieved important awards: T2O media has been named National Champion in the UKTI Innovation category by the Europeans Business Awards 2016 and is one of the first companies in the world to have obtained the title of DoubleClick Certified Marketing Partner. Currently has permanent offices in Europe, LATAM and US, where is the partner of major brands. Its clients include Barceló Hotel Group, Honda, Unicredit, José Cuervo, Movistar, Nextel and AXA insurance.

ABOUT ARDIAN

Ardian, founded in 1996 and led by Dominique Senequier, is an independent private equity company with assets of US$62bn managed or advised in Europe, North America and Asia. The company, which is majority- owned by its employees, keeps entrepreneurship at its heart and delivers investment performance to its global investors while fuelling growth in economies across the world. Ardian’s investment process embodies three values: excellence, loyalty and entrepreneurship. Ardian maintains a truly global network, with more than 450 employees working through twelve offices in Paris, London, Frankfurt, Milan, Madrid, Zurich, New York, San Francisco, Beijing, Singapore, Jersey, Luxembourg. The company offers its 580 investors a diversified choice of funds covering the full range of asset classes, including Ardian Funds of Funds (primary, early secondary and secondary), Ardian Private Debt, Ardian Buyout (including Ardian Mid Cap Buyout Europe & North America, Ardian Expansion, Ardian Growth and Ardian Co-Investment), Ardian Infrastructure, Ardian Real Estate and Ardian Mandates.

Content Central has since autumn 2014 helped the media house and freelance journalists in Sweden to sell and distribute editorial content. Over 3000 freelance journalists, writers and photographers are connected to the service and signed up thousands of articles, crosswords and images for sale.

The company has now developed into 8.7 million SEK in venture capital, most of which was from Fort Knox and Partners Invest North, part of Almi Invest. Together they have gone in with seven million by issuing new shares. Also converts the Silicon Valley-based VC company 500 Startups earlier paid convertible loan of 1.7 million of shares.

– It feels good to finish this round we have been working on for about ten months. Getting into Fort Knox and Partners Invest as local investors feel really good. They have financial muscle, good skills and have important contacts, but above all we will be able to work close to each other which is important in the phase where we are in. For it feels it is of course very exciting to get the 500 Startups to ownership, which can give us interesting inputs internationally, says Joachim Ljungquist, founder and CEO.

The media industry is under a lot of structural and currently employs over 50 percent of the world’s journalists on a freelance basis. ContentCentral is a platform that simplifies deployment, rights and payment of editorial content.

– We have had dialogue regarding an investment in ContentCentral for a long time and it feels great to now be involved in bringing the business forward. The company has an interesting solution that can be an important part of the transformation that the media industry is going through right now. In addition, the platform, the economy in general, an increasingly important business model, says Henrik Wimelius, investment manager for digital business concepts at Fort Knox.

Right now developing the next generation of service with the new technology, which will be the company’s first live version. In addition, work is underway in full swing for the establishment in the UK.

– I have had the privilege to follow the company since its inception and looks really potential to get out of the English-language market that is much larger than the Swedish. On the occasion of the international ambition included ContentCentral we want to be understood to be on the trip, says Lena Fridlund Forsgren, investment manager at Partner Invest North.

The investment will be used to increase resources for the development and for the establishment of new markets.

Operations are conducted through the company Syndigate AB, where Almi Invest is one of the partners.