Advised IRIS, a leading provider of business-critical software to the UK accountancy, education and SME sectors, on its recapitalisation by ICG and Hg Saturn Fund

Arma Partners is pleased to announce that it has acted as exclusive financial advisor to IRIS on its recapitalisation by ICG and Hg Saturn Fund, who will both acquire joint partnership stakes in IRIS from majority shareholder Hg6 Fund. The transaction represents the UK’s largest ever and Europe’s third largest ever private equity led software buyout, at an enterprise value of approximately £1.3 billion.

IRIS is a leading provider of business-critical software to the UK accountancy, education and business markets. Over 21,000 accountancy practices and more than 80,000 small and mid-sized businesses, corporates and payroll bureaus rely on IRIS to run their business every day. IRIS has consistently delivered exceptional financial performance over decades and across economic cycles, growing both revenue and EBITDA at a CAGR of 17% since 2002 driven by deep domain knowledge as well as a good breadth and depth of functionality across its product portfolio. The company is uniquely positioned in the European software ecosystem with a strong product offering, a loyal customer base, superior software metrics with high degrees of recurring revenue and cash flow conversion, and a proven M&A platform with significant cross-sell opportunities.

This is the second £1bn+ European software sell-side transaction Arma Partners has advised on this year, after the recapitalisation last month of TA Associates-backed enterprise software business The Access Group. Following the recent recapitalisation of Visma by Hg, GIC, Montagu and ICG last year valued at $5.3 billion (Europe’s largest ever software buyout), in which Arma acted as financial advisor to the buying consortium, these transactions further underscore the firm’s unrivalled expertise in delivering highly successful outcomes on landmark technology transactions.