Acquisition of Harvest by TA Associates alongside Montagu from Five Arrows Principal Investments
FR
Sycomore Corporate Finance acted as Financial Advisor to TA Associates in its investment in Harvest, a leading provider of SaaS platform for Wealth Management, alongside Montagu
TA Associates, a leading global private equity firm, acquired Harvest, a leading provider of SaaS platform for Wealth Management, alongside Montagu, a leading mid-market private equity firm.
Rationale
Harvest (“the Company”) is the largest pure-play front-office Wealth Management SaaS platform provider in Europe. The Company offers mission-critical software platforms covering the entire customer journey from prospecting, onboarding, compliance, advice, tax, to distribution.
The Company has established and undisputed market leading positions in France with emerging footprint in Italy and Luxembourg, and benefits from significant barriers to entry associated with financial institutions’ reputational, regulatory, scalability and cybersecurity requirements.
Harvest is a trusted partner to its numerous blue-chip clients, serving the largest banks, insurers, asset managers and IFAs, for which wealth management is a profitable and priority segment.
The Company has a proven track record of consistent double-digit organic growth, accelerated by international expansion and supplemented by M&A, combined with an attractive SaaS margin profile.
This transaction will enable Harvest, with the support of TA Associates and Montagu, to support its growth ambitions, especially internationally. This ambition will be achieved through a combination of organic growth and targeted acquisitions in both existing and new geographies in Europe.
Harvest is the largest pure-play front-office Wealth Management SaaS platform in Europe with an undisputed market position in France and an emerging footprint in Italy and Luxembourg. Harvest develops a mission-critical software platform covering the entire customer journey from prospecting, onboarding, compliance, advice, tax, to distribution platform.
TA Associates (“TA”) is a leading global private equity firm focused on scaling growth in profitable companies. Since 1968, TA has invested in more than 560 companies across its five target industries – technology, healthcare, financial services, consumer and business services. Leveraging its deep industry expertise and strategic resources, TA collaborates with management teams worldwide to help high-quality companies deliver lasting value. The firm has raised $65 billion in capital to date and has over 150 investment professionals across offices in Boston, Menlo Park, Austin, London, Mumbai and Hong Kong.
Montagu is a leading mid-market private equity firm, committed to finding and growing businesses that make the world work. Focussing on businesses with a must-have product or service in a structurally growing marketplace, Montagu brings proven growth capabilities to help companies achieve their ambitions and unlock their full potential. Montagu partners with companies with enterprise values between €200 million and €1 billion and has €11bn assets under management. Montagu specialises in carve-out and other first time buyout investments and has deep expertise in five priority sectors: Healthcare, Financial Sector Services, Critical Data, Digital Infrastructure and Education.
Five Arrows is the alternative assets arm of Rothschild & Co and has €26 billion AuM with offices in Paris, London, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Luxembourg. With over €9 billion of assets under management, the corporate private equity business of Five Arrows is focused on investing in companies with highly defensible market positions; strong management teams; business models with high visibility of organic unit volume growth and strong unit economics; and multiple operational levers that can be used to unlock latent value. Sectors are limited to data and software, technology‑enabled business services and healthcare.