Last week I hosted our Tech industry M&A workshop, Selling Up Selling Out, in Paris. It was a well attended session here in Europe despite being at the end of an Easter holiday week. The participants included one private equity investor and the rest were all CEOs of French companies ranging in size from 20 to 200 employees. All had somewhat different short term plans, but it was clear they were all creating leaders in their markets and preparing to exit in the next one to three years.
Throughout the session, one thing became very apparent to me: they all had a deep entrepreneurial spirit and were building international enterprises. The old (non-French) prejudice that French tech companies were too focused on their domestic markets is clearly not true anymore - or never was.
We at Corum have sold a number of French companies and have advised on sales to a number of French buyers. Most of those transaction were with US-based counterparts; however, at least one was a domestic deal within the French borders: our sale of Cartesis - a PwC divestiture of its €72m business performance management company. Cartesis was ultimately acquired by BO and then SAP and is now the foundation of SAPs BPM offering. The sale we managed for PwC to a locally led consortium of financial buyers, was the result of a global process leveraging the interest of multiple bidders from the US and across Europe. Apax France ultimately won that auction, but had to outbid a number of international acquirers.
Having alternative buyers is a leverage you certainly do not want to be missing when selling your own company regardless of where its ultimate buyer is located.