Bridgepoint Capital Sells Off Capella –

Bridgepoint Capital continues its recent run of exits with the sale of Capella to Finland Post. The consideration has not been disclosed.

Bridgepoint Capital, as NatWest Equity Partners, bought Capella from U.K.-listed Holdings in a management buyout/management buy-in in October 1998 for SEK 190 million. At the same time, Bridgepoint also bought Eurocom-Depora Informationssysteme from Mircogen Holdings, although Eurocom-Depora Informationssysteme currently remains within the Bridgepoint-managed portfolio. (At the time Bridgepoint was understood to have paid a combined value of SEK353.6 million in cash including GBP2.5 million of cash contained within the businesses.)

Capella is headquartered in Stockholm and employs 200 people in its process transaction data business targeted at the financial services sector. During Bridgepoint’s ownership, Capella has acquired three businesses: Zetstor Systems, which specializes in data retrival, Relation & Brand, a customer relationship management business, and TietoEnator Output, a printing and archiving business.

Finland Post is expected to expand its operations into the rest of the Nordic market and Northern Europe using Capella as a platform to achieve this.

Bridgepoint was advised by Nordea Securities, which ran the auction for Capella, Vinge provided legal advice, and Arthur Andersen provided accounting advice. Finland Post was advised by KPMG.