PRIMAVERA integrates largest Iberian group of enterprise software

Oakley Capital acquires the entire share capital of PRIMAVERA BSS and creates a new business group to lead the digital era in the Iberian Peninsula.

PRIMAVERA reached an agreement with the British Oakley Capital for the sale of its entire share capital to this consolidated British investment fund. PRIMAVERA is the first Portuguese company to be part of a group of six companies acquired over the last two years by Oakley Capital, which already owns a number of Spanish companies, such as EKON, a renowned Spanish manufacturer of cloud management software for medium and large companies, Contasimple, Diez, among others, with the strategic objective of leading the Iberian market for cloud business management software.

PRIMAVERA is the largest of the group of companies already acquired under this consolidation project, which will be called "Grupo Primavera". This new Group, now created, emerges as a leader in Iberia: 600 employees, 60 million Euros in revenue and 55 000 clients.

The PRIMAVERA team, led by José Dionísio and Jorge Batista, will remain at the head of the company's operations, and the leadership of the Group will be assumed by Santiago Solanas as CEO, a professional with three decades of experience in the sector, namely 10 years in leadership positions at Sage Ibéria, having also held other important positions at Cisco, Microsoft and Oracle.

Following the transaction, the founders and majority shareholders of PRIMAVERA BSS, SA also became significant shareholders of the new business group, shortly after the majority share of the leading fund - Oakley Capital.

According to the two founders of the company, José Dionísio and Jorge Batista, "this is the right project to boost PRIMAVERA and all its employees, partners and customers into a new dimension. We now have the new challenge of supporting the management of the new Grupo Primavera and working together with its CEO, Santiago Solanas, whose experience will be decisive to fulfill the purpose of being, in the short term, the largest Iberian software manufacturer. We are very pleased with everything we have achieved in the various markets where we hold a leadership position, but only through a project of these characteristics and dimensions will we be able to take our technology to a market five times larger, such as the Spanish market. The next few years will be fantastic, in that creativity will command the dreams of offering the most intelligent and disruptive solutions to our customers and also to our partners, who as a result of this project will finally have the doors of the Spanish market more open”.

The CEO of Grupo Primavera, Santiago Solanas, says that "our goal is to be the biggest Iberian player in Cloud Management solutions, offering differentiated solutions that create value for our customers, having by our side a channel of Partners with experience in meeting the needs of companies, all this supported by a team highly motivated to embrace new challenges. This will only be possible with the vision and experience of José Dionísio and Jorge Batista, who made PRIMAVERA a winning project, and who will continue to be important motors for the Grupo Primavera.”

For his part, Arthur Mornington, Partner at Oakley Capital, added that "we are very pleased that José Dionísio and Jorge Batista have accepted our challenge, since PRIMAVERA was the company we chose to complement our Iberian leadership strategy, not only because of its leading position, but also because of the enormous value it adds to the group in terms of its state-of-the-art products, which will certainly be well received in the Spanish market”.

The wide scope of the offer will be one of the major differentiating factors of the new business group, which will join PRIMAVERA BSS's current portfolio – which earlier this year has been largely complemented with new cloud solutions, based on state-of-the-art technology and prepared to enter the Spanish market as early as next year – to the offer developed by the entire business group, thus ensuring full coverage of the management needs of the business framework.

The operation, which has been approved by PRIMAVERA's shareholders, still needs to be appraised by the Competition Authorities of Portugal and Angola in order to become definitive. The parties involved have agreed not to disclose the financial details of the transaction.