Innova Capital sells BusinessPoint

Polish fund Innova Capital has exited its 1997 investment in business out-sourcing firm BusinessPoint. The company has been sold to SwedGiro, a strategic investor specialising in out-sourced services in Scandinavia, the Baltics and Poland.

The investment was made from Innova’s first fund, Poland Partners. Steven Buckley, managing partner of Innova Capital, said: “This represents another successful exit from our first fund despite a very tough exit environment in Poland today…This also further reinforces our belief in the business services sector, which continues to grow rapidly and to attract major strategic investors. Innova Capital has made 13 investments in business services and returns have averaged roughly 2.5 times invested capital.” Innova’s other favoured sectors are financial services, retail, manufacturing, media and entertainment.

BusinessPoint was formed through the spinout of Pioneer’s back-office processing department. BusinessPoint has since expanded its customer base and products, which include transaction processing, invoice and payment processing and database management. Colin Horne, former CEO and now supervisory board member of BusinessPoint, said: “Three years ago BusinessPoint was a severely ailing company operating in an over supplied and fragmented market where the lack of demand was further exacerbated by the reluctance of managers to outsource business processes. Innova Capital stepped in with fresh capital and brought in a new CEO. As a result BusinessPoint was successfully turned around.”