Bryan, Garnier & Co advises the sale of SynerTrade to Digital Dimension

Paris, September 1st, 2015 – Bryan, Garnier & Co announces the acquisition by Digital Dimension of Synertrade, a company identified by Gartner as one of the best and most comprehensive software vendors of e-Procurement and expense analysis solutions worldwide.
After nearly 15 years with the same strongly-committed shareholders, the Advisory Board decided on a change of control to fuel the company’s future growth towards a €50 million company. SynerTrade will thus be part of one of Europe’s largest and most innovative digital companies, Digital Dimension, a subsidiary of Econocom Group. SynerTrade’s Management sees this step as an important move to accelerate the company’s growth while leveraging significant synergies across Digital Dimension group.
Digital Dimension specializes in digital services based on a recurring revenue model. Its services cover mobile solutions, hosting services and SaaS business software applications and are available through its innovative marketplace. SynerTrade will then bring all its assets and expertise to this ambitious joint venture that seeks to develop large-scale global procurement projects. With SynerTrade, Digital Dimension will employ 490 professionals.
With this transaction, Digital Dimension owns 90% of the capital of SynerTrade, which posted revenue of €13 million in 2014. Dr Eberhard Aust, CEO of SynerTrade, will maintain his shares to ensure his ongoing passion and commitment to the company. He will also remain at the head of the organization with total confidence in the motivation and support of his Management team, who will follow him in this new strategic direction: “Joining Digital Dimension will enable us to take on more ambitious projects on a global scale. The complementary offerings of the Digital Dimension companies will help us to support our existing and future customers much better than ever before. From now on, we will accelerate our growth strategy, both inorganic and geographically, to lead the eProcurement cloud market across the globe”.
Adrien Lévy, Chairman of Arts & Bien, selling shareholder of Synertrade: “We are very pleased to hand over to Digital Dimension who will accompany the group in its new development phase. We are proud to have actively accompanied the management team of Synertrade since 2015: refocus of the activity on the software business that we know well (cf. investments in PRENAX and YACAST), international expansion, bank financing and reorganization of the group. In the sale process, Bryan Garnier’s team has been instrumental in finding the right partner for Synertrade, thanks to its deep knowledge of the enterprise software business and landscape”.
Through this transaction, on one of the most recognized and promising players in the strategic sourcing space, Bryan Garnier further strengthens its leadership in the European software space. Recent transactions of the software practice include the investment of Keensight in SmartTrade Technologies, the acquisition of Metrologic Group by Astorg Partners, or the growth financing for Jahia with Invus.
Bryan, Garnier & Co acted as sole financial advisor to the sellers. White & Case acted as legal advisor.
About SynerTrade
SynerTrade is one of Europe’s largest providers of procurement solutions, technologies, know-how and services. Over 30 functional modules are available to support and optimize processes in procurement, finance and engineering. With a team of over 168 sourcing, procurement and spend experts, SynerTrade is supporting medium enterprises as well as large enterprises to increase the performance of their purchasing departments sustainably on a global basis. The German-French company has offices in Germany, France, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, The Netherlands, Scandinavia and Romania.
More than 260 customers worldwide, amongst them 50 Fortune 1000 companies, 10 DAX30 and 20 CAC40 listed companies have placed their trust in SynerTrade’s proven expertise and specialized knowledge for more than two decades.
(www.synertrade.com)
About Digital Dimension
Created in January 2014 by French entrepreneur Georges Croix (CEO and founder of this joint venture, with €49.9% of the share capital) and Econocom (50.1%), Digital Dimension confirms its target of €120 million full-year revenue by 2016, for which it has an investment budget of around €100 million over three years for targeted acquisitions in the mobility, IT hosting and SaaS business software solutions.
The Digital Dimension project is one of the major initiatives Econocom Group has undertaken as part of its strategic plan, which aims to build Econocom as the European leader in business-to-business digital services. Besides SynerTrade, Digital Dimension has acquired European companies Nexica, Rayonnance, ASP Serveur, ETS, TACTEM, Aragon-eRH and Norcod.
Digital Dimension will mainly be targeting large enterprises, in particular in the banking, insurance and retail sectors, where mobility and digitalization are crucial. In terms of geographical expansion, Digital Dimension will be focusing mostly on Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Italy and Benelux, countries in which Econocom is already well established.
(www.digitaldimension.solutions)