By Andrea Hargraves 
Oakley Capital Investments has reached an agreement to acquire Portuguese company Primavera, which provides cloud management software and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, used to manage operations within companies. Primavera’s solutions are particularly focused on small and medium businesses, in the Portuguese market and in some Portuguese-speaking African countries. In a statement, Oakley reportedly “made an indirect contribution of £11 million through Fund III”, approximately €12.85 million, to the existing transfer. However, this value represents only a partial contribution and is not the total value of the transaction, as “the parties concerned have agreed not to disclose the financial details of the transaction.” The statement said the deal was still subject to regulatory approval.
Primavera, which was created in 1993, will merge with the Spanish company Ekon, one of the companies that has been part of the Oakley portfolio since 2019, giving rise to a new group in the Iberian Peninsula, which will operate on the market under the name Grupo Primavera. The statement specifies that this “will be the largest independent software vendor” in the Iberian market.
“The company has been acquired from its founders, José Dionísio and Jorge Batista, who together with Fund III will continue to invest in the new emerging entity and will continue to co-lead the Primavera business,” it reads in the statement. Following this transaction, “the founders of Primavera BSS and a majority of its shareholders were formed as major shareholders of the new business group, immediately after the majority position in the fund they lead — Oakley Capital.”
In addition to Ekon and Primavera, this new business suite will also feature “five acquisitions made over the past 12 months (Tabulae, Contasimple, Billage, Diez Software and Professional Software)”. In total, the group will have 600 workers.
The new group will include its target audience of small and medium businesses, serving “more than 55,000 customers” in Spain and Portugal. The statement also mentions “about €60 million in revenue and double-digit annual growth, driven by rapid adoption of SaaS (Software as a Service)”.
Santiago Solanas will lead this Primavera group, which has a three-decade curriculum in the industry and assignments at Cisco, with leadership roles in France and Southern Europe, at Sage Iberia and also at Microsoft or Oracle. “Our goal is to be the largest Iberian player in cloud management solutions, delivering differentiated solutions that create value for our clients, and at our side a channel of partners with extensive experience responding to corporate needs, all backed by a team that is highly motivated to embrace new challenges. This will only be possible Through the vision and experience of Jose Dionisio and Jorge Batista, who have turned Primavera into a winning project and will continue to be important drivers of the Primavera Group”, emphasizes Santiago Solanas.
The statement details that the new group also intends to “accelerate the implementation of cloud solutions organically by investing in product development and go-to-market initiatives as well as through other acquisitions.”
“This is yet another example of Oakley’s ability to invest in the founder-owned technology business and implement a buy-and-build strategy. By adopting cloud technology in the Iberian Peninsula, which is still lagging behind the rest of Europe, we see great value and potential to grow the largest independent business management software platform to serve small businesses and medium-sized businesses in the region,” explains Peter Dobbins, managing partner at Oakley Capital.
Primavera’s founders and CEO, José Dionísio and Jorge Batista, “are excited about the new path to creating an independent champion in the Iberian management software business”. “This is a project with great potential, bringing together companies with extensive experience and industry leadership. We have already been approached by several potential partners over the years, but with Oakley Capital and Santiago Solanas we have decided to take this step because of the exciting project that we have presented,” Summarize the founders of the company.
(Updated at 10:25AM with more info)