Cinven sells €750m stake in Visma to Hg and CPPIB

Cinven made the realisation from its fifth fund, a €5.3bn vehicle that backed Visma in 2014 at a valuation of NOK 21bn (€2.5bn).

Hg made a €640m investment from its Saturn Fund, a £1.5bn buyout fund raised with the intention of writing considerably larger equity tickets than Hg's other funds. It planned to make three or four investments in companies with enterprise values of more than £1bn.

CPPIB made an additional €110m equity investment in Visma as part of the transaction. The pension fund acquired part of Hg's stake in Visma earlier in the year.

Hg will hold a 63% stake in Visma following the transaction, through the Saturn Fund and Hg7. Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC, Intermediate Capital Group, Montagu Private Equity and CPPIB remain significant co-investors.

Visma has increased its valuation from €450m in 2006 – when Hg first invested – to €6.5bn today.

Previous funding
Visma has been under private equity ownership since 2006, when it was acquired in a NOK 4.32bn take-private by HgCapital 5.

In October 2010, KKR acquired a 76.9% stake in the company, reducing Hg's stake to 17.7% in a NOK 11bn EV deal.

Four years later, Cinven invested in the company alongside KKR and HgCapital (now trading as Hg), splitting the ownership stakes at 31.3% each, with management holding the balance.

KKR agreed to sell its entire stake to a consortium of investors led by Hg in a deal valuing the business at NOK 45bn in June 2015.

Company
Headquartered in Oslo and founded in 1996, Visma is a provider of enterprise software focusing on HR, accounting and management systems. The company generated NOK 9.346bn in revenues and NOK 2.152bn EBITDA in 2017.

People
Hg – Nic Humphries (head of Saturn Fund).
Cinven – Chris Good (partner).
Visma – Øystein Moan (CEO).

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