Munich, London, Paris — Silver­fleet Capi­tal, the Euro­pean private equity firm specia­li­zing in “buy to build”, sells Ipes, a leading Euro­pean provi­der of outsour­cing services in the private equity sector, to the Apex Group Ltd. The tran­sac­tion is still subject to regu­la­tory appr­oval and is expec­ted to result in a signi­fi­cant gain for Silver­fleet. multi­ple of 3.8x and an inter­nal rate of return (IRR) of 30 percent.

Ipes, head­quar­te­red in Guern­sey, was foun­ded in 1998 and has been a pioneer in the Euro­pean private equity market, signi­fi­cantly advan­cing fund admi­nis­tra­tion. With 265 employees in five Euro­pean offices, the company serves 195 custo­mers. The team acts as mana­ger and custo­dian for assets tota­ling $165 billion across 390 funds. Ipes has recor­ded a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 13 percent in its sales over the past ten years. This strong orga­nic growth is based on a deep under­stan­ding of the incre­asing demands on invest­ment mana­gers — for exam­ple in the areas of regu­la­tion and accoun­ting as well as from inves­tors — and the deve­lo­p­ment of inno­va­tive services for clients’ busi­ness success.

Silver­fleet had inves­ted in Ipes in August 2013 to help deve­lop the company into one of the leading outsour­cing provi­ders in the private equity market. Crucial to the invest­ment was the assump­tion that private equity funds, in an envi­ron­ment incre­asingly regu­la­ted by rules and stan­dards such as AIFMD, FATCA and CRS, are incre­asingly outsour­cing their manage­ment tasks to specia­li­zed provi­ders. During the period of Silverfleet’s invol­vement, Ipes was able to signi­fi­cantly expand its presence across Europe and more than double the number of its custo­mers and employees.

“Ipes’ perfor­mance over the past five years has been impres­sive,” said Mark Pias­e­cki, part­ner at Silver­fleet Capi­tal respon­si­ble for the finan­cial services sector. “We are plea­sed to have been able to support manage­ment in the successful execu­tion of its orga­nic growth plan and that Ipes has been able to make important invest­ments. This includes new, inno­va­tive service offe­rings such as Depo­si­tary, but also further streng­thening the indus­­try-leading proprie­tary tech­no­logy solu­ti­ons Capi­tal Tracker and ID Regis­ter. We wish Chris Merry and the team a great working rela­ti­onship with Apex.”

Chris Merry, CEO of Ipes, adds: “I would like to thank the Silver­fleet team for their support and exper­tise. Toge­ther, we have succee­ded in further expan­ding Ipes’ client base, adding inno­va­tive, tech­­no­­logy-driven offe­rings to the service port­fo­lio and gene­ra­ting strong orga­nic growth. We were thus able to cement our market posi­tio­ning as one of the leading outsour­cing provi­ders for private equity in Europe. We look forward to the next phase of Ipes’ deve­lo­p­ment — buil­ding on Apex’s impres­sive track record and scale, we intend to conti­nue working on our strong custo­mer focus.”

Silver­fleet Capi­tal has a long track record of inves­t­ing in busi­ness and finan­cial services, start­ing with finan­cing the buyout of global manage­ment, finance and admi­nis­tra­tion services provi­der TMF from SNS Reaal in 2004. In Janu­ary of the current year, Silver­fleet sold CCC, one of the leading busi­ness process outsour­cing service provi­ders in Europe, to Ardian. Silverfleet’s current invest­ments include Life­time Trai­ning, one of the UK’s leading trai­ning provi­ders. The sale of Ipes is another successful exit for Silver­fleet in this sector.

Advi­sors Silver­fleet: On the sale of Ipes, Silver­fleet Capi­tal was advi­sed by Roth­schild (Corpo­rate Finance), PWC (Finan­cial & Tax), Duff & Phelps (Compli­ance) and Travers Smith (Legal).