Bryan, Garnier & Co advises Thoma Bravo on its successful public-to-private on InfoVista
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Paris, 15th December 2011 – Bryan, Garnier & Co today announced that it acted as sole presenting bank and financial advisor to Thoma Bravo, LLC, a leading U.S. private equity investment firm, in its acquisition of 100% of InfoVista, a listed global leader of service performance assurance.
Following the acquisition of a controlling block of 67.26% in December 2011, Thoma Bravo launched a mandatory simplified public offer on InfoVista from February 20th to March 16th at a price of €3.65 per share, representing a 66% premium over InfoVista share price the day before the acquisition of the block. At closing of the offer, Thoma Bravo had acquired c.4.8m shares of InfoVista thus holding globally 94.6% of the capital of the company. The minority shareholders of InfoVista now holding 3.33% of the company (excluding treasury shares), Thoma Bravo requested a squeeze-out procedure to the AMF. Euronext Paris announced the effective delisting of the InfoVista shares on 23 March 2012.
Thoma Bravo, as a specialized investor with deep industry knowledge, will support the management of infoVista in pursuing its development as a leading supplier of service performance assurance solutions and will help building InfoVista as a platform for growth in the infrastructure software market.
Olivier Beaudouin, Managing Director at Bryan, Garnier & Co commented: “we are delighted that Thoma Bravo, one of the oldest and largest U.S. private equity firms, relied on our experience to advise them on their first platform software acquisition in Europe. The successful outcome of the public offer demonstrates our capabilities in executing complex transactions on listed companies. Indeed, this is the fifth transaction involving a publicly listed company advised by Bryan Garnier over the last 12 months. This transaction also further strengthens our leadership in European Software advisory (8 transactions in the last 12 months) and expands our transaction track record to the telecom infrastructure software vertical.”
Christian Finan, Equity Capital Market Director at Bryan, Garnier & Co added: “the acquisition of InfoVista was a challenging transaction with the objective of acquiring 100% of the capital of a company with a fragmented shareholding structure. For this purpose, we have structured a transaction in two steps with the acquisition of a controlling block from 15 different shareholders, followed by an exceptional dividend payment and a simplified public offer on the remaining outstanding shares. With the aim of reaching the squeeze out at the end of the offer, we have successfully put in place an optimized communication and solicitation plan and closely monitored the reaction of the market.”
For more information, please contact:
- Olivier Beaudouin / Managing Director – Corporate Finance / +33 1 56 68 75 35 / obeaudouin@bryangarnier.com
- Thibaut de Smedt / Managing Director – Corporate Finance / + 33 1 56 68 75 75 / tdesmedt@bryangarnier.com
- Christian Finan / Director – Equity Capital Markets / +33 1 56 68 75 30 / cfinan@bryangarnier.com
- Vincent Gasné / Vice-President – Corporate Finance / + 33 1 56 68 75 9 / vgasne@bryangarnier.com
- Jonathan Foiret-Hurbin / Associate – Corporate Finance / +33 1 56 68 75 52 / jfoirethurbin@bryangarnier.com
About Thoma Bravo
Thoma Bravo is a leading private equity investment firm building on a 30+ year history of providing equity and strategic support to experienced management teams building growing companies. The firm has continued to apply the concept of industry consolidation investing, which seeks to create value through the strategic use of acquisitions to accelerate business growth. Thoma Bravo invests across multiple industries, with a particular focus in enterprise and infrastructure software and financial and business services, and works in partnership with management to implement its operating and consolidation expertise to build long-term value. The firm currently manages a series of private equity funds representing almost $4 billion of equity commitments. In software, Thoma Bravo has completed 47 add-on acquisitions across 21 platform companies with total annual earnings of approximately $1 billion.
About Infovista
InfoVista is the leading provider of service performance assurance software solutions for IP-based network and application services. We empower communication service providers and large IT enterprise organizations to transform their IT infrastructure into a distinctive asset for revenue generation, customer loyalty and business agility by adopting a quality centric approach to expedite the launch of innovative, differentiated and performing services ahead of the competition. InfoVista’s unified network performance management and application performance management platform equips 80% of the world’s largest operators and a roster of global enterprises with the actionable visibility they need to ensure a high-quality user experience end-to-end, by holistically and effectively assuring the performance and quality of their converged network and IT services, while keeping operational costs as low as possible.