HgCapital, Cinven and KKR in €2.5bn Visma deal

The transaction saw each buyout house taking a 31.3% stake, with the remaining shares held by Nordic institutional investors including Ilmarinen and Storebrand, along with Visma's management.

Cinven invested via its fifth fund.

HgCapital invested £405m for its 31.3% stake, with capital drawn from its HgCapital 7 Fund. Having initially invested in Visma through its HgCapital 5 Fund, the new deal sees HgCapital Trust generating proceeds of £40.7m. The capital HgCapital has invested in Visma between 2006 and 2014 has generated an overall investment multiple of 5.2x and an IRR of 34% for HgCapital 5.

The exit from one fund and new investment by a successor fund marks a new development in private equity deals, labelled the "secondary selfie" – click here to read our analysis of this new type of deal-doing.

Previous investment
HgCapital first invested £101m in Visma in 2006, delisting the company from the Oslo Stock Exchange.

KKR acquired a 76.9% stake in the company in September 2010, enabling HgCapital to partially exit by selling a 63.5% holding. This transaction valued the company at NOK 11bn and generated cash proceeds of £39.4m for HgCapital Trust.

Company
Visma provides enterprise resource planning (ERP) software and services including accounting, payroll applications and services, and tax to more than 340,000 SME customers, retailers and local authorities throughout the Nordic region.

In 2013, the company generated revenues of NOK 6.5bn (€778.5m). The group's EBITDA stood at NOK 1.32bn in 2013, representing significant growth compared with the EBITDA of NOK 305m generated in 2006.

Headquartered in Oslo, Visma operates in 12 countries across northern Europe and employs 5,600 people.

People
Visma's management team will continue to be led by CEO Oystein Moan.
Nic Humphries is managing partner and head of TMT at HgCapital. David Barker is a partner at Cinven.

Advisers
Equity – OC&C (Commercial due diligence); EY (Financial due diligence); Deloitte (Tax); Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer (Legal); Thommessen (Legal).

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• Topics
• Nordics
• Buyout
• Support services
• Exits
• Cinven
• KKR
• HgCapital
• Norway
• Secondary buyout