Its current shareholder, Greek private equity firm Global Finance is set to sell its stake to a strategic investor most likely, TotalSoft chief operating officer Daniel Mateescu said at the Top Tranzactii (M&A Deals) event organized by ZF early this week.
Founder Liviu Dragan will retain a minority ownership, while the private equity firm will sell 90% of the business.
“We are close to signing a deal and we’ll change shareholder by June. We can see a change in the mergers and acquisitions market, we attempted a change of shareholder in 2013 but were unable to create competition among buyers. The deal fell through because we were not offered the price we wanted at the time,” Daniel Mateescu said.
The current process, which started at the end of 2015 is something else, the executive says. The company had more strategic than financial investors interested in it, so it will most likely strike deal with a strategic investor. One of the names mentioned by the media in connection with this deal is Turkey’s Logo Yazilim, which posted $40 million revenue and had more than 500 employees last year.
Logo Yazilim signed a non-binding agreement with Global Finance, according to a release published on the stock exchange and quoted by Reuters.
“Everyone sitting down for talks is foreign-held, there isn’t a single Romanian-held potential buyer. At least 20 investors passed the first round of negotiations.”
Daniel Mateescu says that everyone wants the entrepreneur to stay with the business and that is a normal request, because Total Soft is a company whose core asset is people. “The buyer is afraid the entrepreneur might leave and take everybody with him.”
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)