Carlyle sells German human resources group

The $71.4bn global private equity firm The Carlyle Group sold its 66.64% majority shareholding in Personal & Informatik, a human resources software company based in Wiesbaden, Germany.

The Carlyle Group has been the major shareholder of Personal & Informatik since June 2004. The Carlyle Group’s indirectly held shares were sold with immediate effect on August 23, 2007 to 35 institutional investors in Europe and United States in a book-building process managed by Berenberg Bank. “From a shareholder perspective, this has been an outstanding investment for us and our partners. We were able to demonstrate our ability to create value in this important transition from a founder led firm to a successful and now fully independent public company. This value resulted from management’s hard work, in positive cooperation with the supervisory board, and without any financial leverage,” said Wolfgang Hanrieder, managing director of The Carlyle Group and Co-Head of Carlyle’s Technology funds in Europe.

It is planned that the two Carlyle representatives on the P&I supervisory board, Wolfgang Hanrieder and Michael Wand, stepped down at the most recent AGM.

Michael Wand , managing director of The Carlyle Group, said: “P&I has achieved strong growth during our three year holding period: 185% increase in EBIT, 36% increase in revenues, 50% increase in license revenues and an 18% increase in headcount. These efforts also resulted in a three-fold increase in share value to all public shareholders. With this evolution P&I has fulfilled all targets of our initial investment thesis and is well positioned for future growth. More recently the company gained additional momentum through strategic partnerships including ADP and LogicaCMG. P&I now benefits from greater liquidity and a strong institutional shareholder base.”

In the year ending March 31, 2007, P&I achieved earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) of €12.3 million (previous year: €9.8 million), boosting the EBIT margin from 19.6% in the previous year to the present 22.5%. Total sales rose by 9.1% to €54.5 million. A dividend of €1.00 per share was recommended for FY06/07 following an extraordinary pay-out of €3.00 per share in the previous year. P&I continued its strong performance in the first quarter of FY07/08, posting a 35% increase in sales and an EBIT of €4.3 million (previous year: €2.0 million), which corresponds to an EBIT margin of 27.6%.