Siparex et al. back Viasphère MBO

The group's management, led by CEO Christian Lehr, secured a majority stake in the company. In addition to the financial backers consortium led by Siparex, the transaction also involved private investors Jean-Alexandre Grunelius and Jacques Braun, via their Jabe Invest and BSS Gestion investment vehicles.

The equity and qusi-equity component of the deal is understood to have totalled €30m, with Siparex, BPI and Alliance Entreprendre each providing around €5-6m. Viasphère is understood to have been valued in the region of 8.5x EBITDA.

A banking pool involving LCL, CIC, Crédit Agricole, Banque Populaire and Artemid provided a senior debt package to leverage the transaction.

The deal will allow Intermediate Capital Group (ICG) to exit the business – the investor acquired Viasphère (then Viadom) in 2014.

Viasphère will now focus on extending its geographical reach and further developing its digital infrastructure. It is targeting a €100m turnover within the next two years.

Previous funding
Edmond de Rothschild Capital Partners (EdRCP) backed the secondary buyout of Groupe Viadom from Atria Capital Partenaires in 2006. The buyout house took a 74% stake, of which a small part was subsequently syndicated, while management retained the 26% balance. ICG provided mezzanine financing. Atria had originally delisted the business in 2002.

In 2014, ICG bought the business from EdRCP as the latter was being acquired by Bridgepoint.

The group has made a number of acquisitions since the 2006 buyout, including that of listed home help services provider Merci Plus Groupe in 2011.

Company
Founded in the 1980s, Viasphère is a French provider of services at home. The company's traditional focus has been on offering hairdressing services via its Viadom brand, and it later expanded into home cleaning (Menage.fr), DIY and IT (OK Service) and the installation of smart gas and electricity meters.

The group operates four separate networks of agencies, a website and five call centres. It serves 150,000 clients and generates turnover of around €70m with a 12.5% EBITDA margin.

People
Siparex – Pierre Bordeaux-Montrieux, Nathanael Martin, Yann Rinckenberger.
Alliance Entreprendre – Laurent Colléatte, Romain Mistre.
BPI France – Olivier Levy, Ronan Frefield, Julie Regnier, Sylvie Huss.
Eurocapital – Stéphane Becker, Estelle Selig, Lionel Werner.

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• Topics
• Buyouts
• Exits
• France
• Consumer
• France
• Intermediate Capital Group
• Siparex
• BPI France
• Secondary buyout