Silverfleet Capital invests in Collectia

Coll­ec­tia is a provi­der of debt coll­ec­tion and debt purchase services with more than 13,000 corpo­rate custo­mers in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Germany.

Munich, London, Brøndby — Euro­pean private equity firm Silver­fleet Capi­tal has acqui­red a majo­rity stake in Coll­ec­tia A/S, a credit manage­ment service provi­der based in Brøndby, Denmark. Details of the tran­sac­tion will not be disclosed.

Coll­ec­tia was foun­ded in 1998 and today is a rapidly growing provi­der of debt coll­ec­tion and debt purchase services. Head­quar­te­red in Brøndby, the company opera­tes mainly in the Danish market and has also estab­lished a smal­ler market presence in Sweden, Norway and Germany. With more than 175 employees, Coll­ec­tia curr­ently hand­les more than 600,000 active cases for appro­xi­m­ately 13,000 corpo­rate clients.

Coll­ec­tia has a mature proprie­tary tech­no­logy plat­form as well as an exten­sive credit data­base and advan­ced data analy­tics capa­bi­li­ties. This makes Coll­ec­tia a clearly diffe­ren­tia­ted company with the poten­tial to gain addi­tio­nal market share in both exis­ting and new markets. In recent years, the company has diver­si­fied its service port­fo­lio: In addi­tion to its core busi­ness of debt coll­ec­tion services, it has expan­ded its receiv­a­bles purcha­sing acti­vi­ties and laun­ched a new credit rating infor­ma­tion service in Denmark. Coll­ec­tia has also made seve­ral acqui­si­ti­ons to expand its presence in Scan­di­na­via and Germany.

Silver­fleet Capi­tal has many years of expe­ri­ence in finan­cial services and focu­ses on lever­aging advan­ta­ge­ous macro dyna­mics. In Collectia’s case, incre­asing regu­la­tion in Denmark and across the EU is driving the outsour­cing of debt coll­ec­tion proces­ses to specia­li­zed service provi­ders; also, Coll­ec­tia expects that addi­tio­nal, new regu­la­tion in the coming years will lead to an incre­asing volume of problem loan and debtor port­fo­lios that banks and compa­nies will resell to specialists.

With the invest­ment from Silver­fleet, Coll­ec­tia intends to further acce­le­rate its growth course. The aim is to conti­nue to draw on the excel­lent tech­­no­­logy-based proces­ses in order to further deve­lop the Coll­ec­tion Solu­ti­ons area. The receiv­a­bles purcha­sing area is to be expan­ded, and the company’s inter­na­tio­nal expan­sion is to be further driven by targe­ted verti­cal niche acquisitions.

Mark Pias­e­cki (photo), Part­ner at Silver­fleet Capi­tal, says: “With Coll­ec­tia, we have gained a tech­no­lo­gi­cally savvy company with a core busi­ness in Denmark as a part­ner that offers many oppor­tu­ni­ties for growth on both a natio­nal and inter­na­tio­nal level. We look forward to working closely with Collectia’s expe­ri­en­ced manage­ment team and to buil­ding on past succes­ses and reali­zing the company’s poten­tial together.”

Chris­tian la Cour Valen­tin, CEO of Coll­ec­tia, adds: “Silver­fleet Capi­tal shares our stra­te­gic vision for the future of Coll­ec­tia and under­stands where the parti­cu­lar strengths of our company lie. Toge­ther with its expe­ri­ence, capi­tal strength and network, the company is an ideal part­ner to expand our growth strategy.”

Coll­ec­tia marks the eleventh invest­ment for Silver­fleet Capi­tal from the current fund. The Silver­fleet port­fo­lio includes compa­nies from the UK, France, Bene­lux, Scan­di­na­via and Germany.

At Silver­fleet Capi­tal, Mark Pias­e­cki, Karl Eidem, Robert Knight, Johan Boork and Farhad Tatar were respon­si­ble for the current tran­sac­tion. The invest­ment company was advi­sed on the tran­sac­tion by Houli­han Lokey (M&A), Deloitte (Debt, Commer­cial, Finan­cial & Tax), Bruun & Hjejle, Travers Smith and McFar­la­nes (all Legal), Rud Peder­sen (Regu­la­tory), BearingPoint(IT) and Quan­tum Data Analy­tics (Finan­cial). Debt finan­cing was provi­ded by Alcen­tra and Sydbank.

About Silver­fleet Capital
Silver­fleet Capi­tal has been active as a private equity inves­tor in the Euro­pean mid-market for more than 30 years. The 32-strong invest­ment team works from Munich, London, Paris, Stock­holm and Amsterdam.

Scan­di­na­via is one of the geogra­phi­cal target regi­ons for Silver­fleet Capi­tal; the company is parti­cu­larly active in Denmark. The invest­ment in Coll­ec­tia in 2020 marks Silver­fleet Capital’s fourth plat­form invest­ment in Denmark since 2013; other recent tran­sac­tions include the successful exits of Phase One in 2019 and Cimbria in 2016.

Ten invest­ments have alre­ady been made from the second inde­pen­dent fund closed in 2015 with a volume of 870 million euros: The Masai Clot­hing Company, a whole­sa­ler and retailer of women’s fashion head­quar­te­red in Denmark; Coven­tya, a French deve­lo­per of specialty chemi­cals; Sigma Compon­ents, a UK-based manu­fac­tu­rer of precis­ion compon­ents for civil avia­tion; Life­time Trai­ning, a provi­der of trai­ning programs based in the United King­dom; Pumpen­fa­brik Wangen, a manu­fac­tu­rer of specialty pumps based in Germany; Riviera Travel, an escor­ted group tour and cruise opera­tor based in the United King­dom; 7days, a German supplier of medi­cal work­wear; Prefere Resins, a leading phen­o­lic and amino resin manu­fac­tu­rer in Europe, CARE Fertility, a leading opera­tor of ferti­lity clinics in the United King­dom, and BOA Core­Dux, a leading desi­gner and manu­fac­tu­rer of custom, high-purity metal hoses for criti­cal indus­trial applications.

Silver­fleet Capi­tal also main­ta­ins an invest­ment team specia­li­zing in smal­ler middle-market compa­nies, which has alre­ady made two successful invest­ments: STAXS Conta­mi­na­tion Control Experts, a leading supplier of clean­room access­ories in the Bene­lux (comple­ted in Janu­ary 2019), and Micro­gen Finan­cial Systems, a leading provi­der of trust and fund admi­nis­tra­tion soft­ware for the trust and corpo­rate services industry.

Silver­fleet achie­ves value growth by inves­t­ing in compa­nies in its core sectors that bene­fit from speci­fic, long-term trends. Silver­fleet supports these compa­nies in their future growth stra­te­gies. As part of these stra­te­gies, invest­ments are made in orga­nic growth drivers, inter­na­tio­na­liza­tion, stra­te­gic acqui­si­ti­ons or opera­tio­nal impro­ve­ment proces­ses. Since 2004, Silver­fleet Capi­tal has inves­ted €2.1 billion in 32 companies.

Silver­fleet specia­li­zes in four key indus­tries: Busi­ness and Finan­cial Services, Health­care, Manu­fac­tu­ring, and Retail and Consu­mer Goods.

Since 2004, the private equity inves­tor has inves­ted 30% of its assets in compa­nies head­quar­te­red in the DACH region, 33% in the UK and Ireland, 18% in Scan­di­na­via, and 15% in France and the Bene­lux (includes an invest­ment sourced in Belgium and head­quar­te­red in the US).

Silver­fleet Capi­tal has a solid invest­ment track record. Most recently, Silver­fleet sold Phase One, a leading tech­no­logy company in the field of high-end digi­tal camera systems and for image proces­sing soft­ware (invest­ment multi­ple 4.6x); Ipes, a leading provi­der of outsour­cing services for Euro­pean private equity compa­nies (invest­ment multi­ple 3.7x); CCC, one of the leading BPO services provi­ders in Europe; and Cimbria, a Danish manu­fac­tu­rer of agri­cul­tu­ral equip­ment (invest­ment multi­ple cannot be disc­lo­sed for legal reasons); Kalle, a German manu­fac­tu­rer of arti­fi­cial sausage sticks (invest­ment multi­ple 3.5x); OFFICE, a UK-based foot­wear retailer (invest­ment multi­ple 3.4x); and Aesica, a leading phar­maceu­ti­cal CDMO company (invest­ment multi­ple 3.3x).