PE-backed CarTrawler to acquire Cabforce

The acquisition will see CarTrawler incorporate Cabforce's taxi-booking technology into its online car-rental business. The deal comes roughly a year after CarTrawler was picked up by BC Partners and Insight Venture Partners, in March 2014.

The SBO, understood to be valued between £300-380m, saw BC secure a majority stake in the Irish car rental service from ECI Partners. Insight secured a minority stake, as did CarTrawler's management.

Scoring a 6x return at exit, ECI Partners had invested between €40-50m to acquire a 50% stake in CarTrawler in May 2011, according to unquote" data.

Company
Founded in 2009, Cabforce is a Finnish taxi-booking business. Headquartered in Helsinki, the company offers pre-booking services for flat-rate taxis used by business travellers in 200 locations across 54 countries worldwide.

Founded in 2004, Dublin-headquartered CarTrawler offers online car-hire services and acts as a link between 2,000 travel retailers and 1,300 car-rental agents. Employing a workforce of 300 people in its Dublin, London and Boston offices, the company is present in 30,000 locations across 174 countries.

People
BC Partners was represented by senior partner Matthew Tooth. Mike McGearty is CEO at CarTrawler, while Andreas Hansson holds the same position at Cabforce and is also the company's co-founder.

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• Topics
• UK / Ireland
• Expansion
• Consumer
• Ireland
• BC Partners