Apax sells Cartesis

Apax leads a consortium of Advent Venture Partners, Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec and Partech International, all of whom are selling their interests after acquiring the business in February 2004 from PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The last three years have been well-spent with Cartesis becoming the market leader in BPM software provision. Its private equity owners invested in the business internally and provided financial backing to expand the company overseas and increase its product line. Two acquisitions were made – INEA and AIS, both added in 2005.

“Cartesis is a true success story,” said Gilles Rigal, partner at Apax Partners. “We and our co-investors thoroughly enjoyed supporting Cartesis’ talented and ambitious management team and participating in the acceleration of the company’s global development. It is an extremely positive step for Cartesis, a key player in the global BPM market, to join forces with the world’s leading business intelligence software company in a combination that makes a tremendous amount of sense.”

Cartesis now has over 1,300 corporate customers, 600 employees and 200 consultants worldwide. It has customers in 44 different countries, and counts among its users Air France, Société Générale and Standard Life. It also has offices in Brussels, Frankfurt, London, Norwalk (CT), Paris, Tokyo, Toronto and Utrecht.

Cartesis will become a part of the Business Objects Enterprise Performance Management product line organization. “This acquisition marks an important step in our strategy of systematically building out the industry’s best performance management platform,” said John Schwarz, CEO of Business Objects. “The acquisition of Cartesis will allow us to extend our comprehensive solutions for the office of the CFO by providing critical, cross-application and cross-database line of sight to financial and management reporting, including consolidated statements and budgeting – all on the industry’s number one business intelligence platform.”