HgCapital et al’s Visma acquires E-conomic and SpeedLedger

Although the price was not disclosed, Danish media estimates the deal's value at around DKK 1.5bn.

Visma has purchased the core Nordic part of Denmark's E-conomic in an all-share deal with HgCapital, and has also acquired a majority share in Swedish business SpeedLedger. The vendor will retain a majority stake in E-conomic's international business, as well as invoicing and accounting services provider Debitoor.

The deal sees Visma considerably expand its presence in the enterprise resource planning sector for Nordic SMEs.

For HgCapital, the partial exit comes less than two years after the GP bought E-conomic in August 2013. SpeedLedger was bolted on in October the following year when E-conomic acquired a 70% stake in the company.

E-conomic CEO Mogens Elsberg, who joined the company last year, will step aside following the acquisition. Eilert Giertsen Hanoa will assumes the position of interim CEO until a permanent replacement is found.

Previous funding
HgCapital bought Visma in a 2006 public-to-private transaction worth NOK 4.32bn. KKR acquired a 76.9% stake in the business four years later, in a deal giving the company an enterprise value of NOK 11bn.

In April 2014, the ownership structure was re-shuffled once more as HgCapital and KKR reinvested in Visma alongside new backer Cinven, giving all three GPs an equal 31.3% stake in the company.

Company
Founded in 2001, E-conomic is a Copenhagen-based provider of software-as-a-service accounting products for SMEs. The company operates in Scandinavia, Germany, the UK and Spain.

In 2013, it had revenues of €16.3m and employed 160 people.

Since late 2014, Gothenburg-headquartered SpeedLedger had been 70% owned by E-conomic prior to the transaction. Also founded in 2001, SpeedLedger offers services similar to those provided by E-conomic.

People
Nic Humphries is the managing partner of HgCapital and Øystein Moan is the CEO of Visma.

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