Activant Solutions Inc., Livermore, Calif., will be acquired by funds advised by Apax Partners, a global private-equity firm that invests in technology companies. Activant is currently owned by investment funds affiliated with Hellman & Friedman LLC, Thoma Bravo, LLC and JMI Equity, and by management. Activant had 2009 revenues of $378.9 milllion and 1,700 employees, according to information on its website.
Apax also announced today that it is has entered into a definitive agreement under which funds advised by Apax will acquire Epicor Software Corp., Irvine, Calif., a publicly traded company that trades on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol "EPIC". Apax intends to combine Activant with Epicor to create one of the largest global providers of enterprise applications focused on the manufacturing, distribution, services and retail sectors. Following completion of the merger, the combined company will be called Epicor Software Corp. According to its 10-K, Epicor had 2010 sales of approximately $440.3 million.
About the Author
Jim Lucy Blog
Chief Editor
Jim Lucy has been wandering through the electrical market for more than 30 years, most of the time as an editor for Electrical Wholesaling, Electrical Marketing newsletter and CEE News. During that time he and the editorial team for the publications have won numerous national awards for their coverage of the electrical business. He showed an early interest in electricity, when as a youth he had an idea for a hot dog cooker. Unfortunately, the first crude prototype malfunctioned and the arc nearly blew him out of his parents' basement. Before becoming an editor for Electrical Wholesaling magazine and Electrical Marketing, he earned a BA degree in journalism and a MA in communications from Glassboro State College, Glassboro, NJ., which is formerly best known as the site of the 1967 summit meeting between President Lyndon Johnson and Russian Premier Aleksei Nikolayevich Kosygin, and now best known as the New Jersey state college that changed its name in 1992 to Rowan University because of a generous $100 million donation by N.J. zillionaire industrialist Henry Rowan. Jim is a Brooklyn-born Jersey Guy happily transplanted in the fertile plains of Kansas for the past 20 years.