Houlihan Lokey Advises Pollen Street Capital

Houlihan Lokey is pleased to announce that Pollen Street Capital and DBAY Advisors Ltd. (DBAY) have jointly acquired Proactis, a UK-based business spend management (BSM) software provider. The transaction completed on 27 July 2021.

Proactis has been acquired by Café Bidco Ltd., a newly incorporated company owned by Pollen Street Capital and DBAY, through a scheme of arrangement recommended by the board of Proactis. As a result, Proactis has delisted from the AIM submarket of the London Stock Exchange.

Proactis is a leading BSM software provider operating in the United Kingdom, United States, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. The business offers a complete range of source-to-pay capabilities deployed through its leading core BSM platform, enabling its clients to make their purchasing activities more effective by enabling digitalisation of trading interactions with suppliers, workflow management and process automation tools for their employees, and offering embedded finance capabilities. This helps its 1,000+ clients save money and create efficiency gains, whilst increasing compliance and reducing risk. Proactis has over 3 million users within its client base, managing over 2 million supplier relationships in over 100 countries through its platform.

Pollen Street Capital is one of Europe’s leading specialist private equity investors in the financial and business services sectors, having invested over £1.5 billion since 2003 in a range of businesses across all stages of development.

DBAY is a pan-European asset manager and investor in public and private securities with offices in Douglas (Isle of Man) and London. Founded in 2011, DBAY manages a range of funds and co-investment vehicles for endowments, foundations, and other institutional investors.

Houlihan Lokey served as the exclusive financial advisor to Café Bidco Ltd. during the transaction. This deal builds on Houlihan Lokey’s recent momentum in fintech, which includes the sale of Colmore to Preqin; the capital raise received by DNA Payments from Alchemy Partners; the acquisition of Itiviti by Broadridge; the sale of eDriving to Solera; the minority sale of LCP to Charterhouse; and the sale of Trade Informatics to Abel Noser.