12th September 2023
FPE Capital LLP (‘FPE’), the specialist software & services focused lower mid-market growth investor, announces that its portfolio company NoBlue2 has acquired BrightBridge Solutions to create one of Europe’s largest Oracle NetSuite partners. The combined business has over 400 customers, approximately 130 employees and revenues of over £16m.
NoBlue2 is the fifth and most recent investment from FPE Fund III – the firm’s third specialist software and services fund, the successful final close of which was announced in May 2022, at a raised hard cap of £185m. The acquisition was funded from a new debt facility with DunPort Capital Management and equity from Fund III.
Following successfully exited and existing investments into the ERP software sector, this latest acceleration in the scaling of the NoBlue2 investment continues FPE’s significant focus in this sector with an investment in the channel of Oracle NetSuite, the leading global cloud native ERP vendor.
NoBlue2 was created through the recent merger of NoBlue with Elevate2, which FPE initiated and funded, and which brought together two UK Oracle NetSuite partners, who are able to offer customers support in digital transformation across Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Professional Services Automation (PSA) or Commerce, or a combination of all of these.
BrightBridge is another leading UK solution provider in the Oracle NetSuite ecosystem, and in addition has significant capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics and Sage. It was awarded top 3 Oracle NetSuite EMEA partner status in 2022. The business has over 150 enterprise customers spread across a range of sectors. It employs 46 people.
Dan Walker, Partner at FPE FPE is delighted to have completed this significant acceleration of our investment in NoBlue2 through this acquisition of BrightBridge so soon after our initial investment. We have used our specialist focus on this sector to identify this rapid pathway to creating the leading European Oracle NetSuite partner. We are ambitious to continue an acquisitive and organic growth strategy in this sector and provide our customers with a range of business applications and services to aid their digital transformation.
Ian Irwin, CEO of NoBlue2 I’m delighted to welcome the BrightBridge team and their customers - we’re looking forward to working together to help customers to achieve their goals. We’re focused on strengthening our relationships further, delivering existing – and new – products and services to customers, and expanding our reach to deliver more innovative solutions to ambitious businesses.
Ian Robertson, Co-Founder and Sales and Marketing Director of BrightBridge Any acquisition had to be a perfect fit to guarantee customer satisfaction and staff retention for both our NetSuite and Microsoft teams – I’m delighted that we identified FPE’s investment and NoBlue2 as just that. This is great news for everyone - we can continue to deliver projects to BrightBridge’s high standard and be part of an exciting growth story.
The FPE investment was led by Dan Walker, Ben Cole, Harriet Hunt and Harry Gill. NoBlue2 was advised on the transaction by Stephenson Harwood (Legal), Crowe U.K. LLP (Financial and Tax), Graph Strategy (Commercial), Lockton Insurance and Cowgills. Debt financing was provided by DunPort Capital Management team of Ross Morrow, David Gilbane and Seán Healy who were advised by Addleshaw Goddard (Legal). The shareholders of BrightBridge were advised by RSM (deal advisory).