Irish VCs exit SteelTrace

Trinity Venture Capital, the Irish early stage investor, has sold its stake in SteelTrace, a Dublin-based IT company, to Compuware for US$20m (€16.3m). Trinity invested in the business when it led a US$2.3m series A round in January 2004, with investment director Brian Caulfield joining the board. Co-investing alongside Trinity was previous investor netdecisions, a UK technology investor that had already provided an undisclosed amount of debt financing, and new investor Enterprise Ireland. All have sold their shares.

A large factor in Compuware’s decision to buy the software solutions company was SteelTrace’s penetration of the US market. It has two of its three offices there (in New York and Boston) and, according to the company, around 60% of its revenues come from US businesses, including Compuware.