Sentica acquires stake in Citec

The value of the deal has not been disclosed, though the investor targets companies with an enterprise value of €15-60m, and Citec was said to be well within that range. Rune Westergård, the previous majority owner of the company, has retained a 20% stake while other key people in Citec own the remaining 13% stake. The transaction was sourced proprietarily and sees Sentica merge Citec Engineering Oy and Citec Information Oy.

As a merged entity, Citec Group is believed to be set for accelerated growth and synergy benefits. The companies will continue their operations as separate identities under the new group. Sentica will support the organic growth of the company as well as select add-on acquisitions.

Equity for the transaction was provided by Sentica Buyout III, which raised €119.5m at final close in 2009.

Debt
Senior financing was provided by Nordea and Ilmarinen Mutual Pension Insurance Company. Etera Mutual Pension Insurance Company supported the transaction with junior financing.

Company
Citec Engineering offers engineering services for the energy & power, process and rail vehicle industries. Citec Information is an internal-information and user-documentation management, design and production service provider. The combined group employs approximately 1,000 people and generated a turnover of €55m in 2010.

Citec is headquartered in Vaasa and has operations in Sweden, the UK, France, Russia and India.

People
Christer Niemi, Eero Leskinen, Antti Keränen and Mikael Autio worked on the deal for Sentica Partners.

Advisers
Equity – Ernst & Young (Financial due diligence and tax); White & Case (Legal); August Associates (Commercial due diligence); Mercuri Urval (HR due diligence).

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