Advisory firm Clearwater International has advised Business Collaborator on its sale to private equity house YFM Equity Partners and the Management Team, led by Chairman Richard Beaton and CEO Sanjeev Shah.
Business Collaborator is at the forefront of providing Building Information Modelling (BIM) software tools, designed to ease the transition of asset construction and maintenance projects to an interactive paperless environment. The Reading-based SaaS business has over 16 years of experience and 160,000 users of its software worldwide.
The investment from YFM will see Business Collaborator exit UNIT4, a Netherlands-based global software company with operations in 26 countries worldwide, employing more than 4000 people. Business Collaborator will retain a close relationship with UNIT4 who have agreed to resell Business Collaborator’s BIM solutions for an exclusive period of up to three years.
Private equity house YFM has 30 years’ experience of investing and transforming fast-growing businesses. The Leeds-based firm has previous experience in the technology sector. The funding will enable Business Collaborator to continue to expand its offering of Collaboration and BIM software tools and accelerate its Go To Market strategy.
With 54 per cent of construction professionals in 2014 using BIM systems, compared to 13 per cent in 2011, the deal also offers Business Collaborator the potential to capitalise on this growing market.
As part of the deal, Richard Beaton will join the board as Chairman. Richard has extensive experience in construction technology, having built up an ERP group in this space also with YFM backing, sold it to Sage and then bought it back in 2013, also advised by Clearwater International.
The Clearwater International team was led by Head of TMT Carl Houghton and Associate Director Andy Dyer.
Houghton, partner at Clearwater International, says: “Whilst it has taken some time to mature, we are very bullish about the growth of quality BIM assets and we are delighted to help the team to carve out Business Collaborator from its corporate parent. We have seen a number of BIM related software businesses go for strong valuations recently and private equity interest in the sector is at an all time high.”
Clearwater International has strong experience in construction software sector, having advised BIM experts CSC World in 4 transactions including an exit to US giant Trimble in 2013, Eque2 in no less than 7 separate deals in the vertical over a 7 year period, and Danish BIM player Byggeweb on its 2014 sale to RIB Software AG.
