Longview Solutions to be acquired by Exact Software

Wellington Financial Fund II portfolio company Longview Solutions has agreed to be acquired by Exact Software of the Netherlands for US$51.5 million. That price works out to be about 2x revenue. Closing expected to be on November 15, 2007.

We joined lead investor VenGrowth Capital Partners in 2005. Hats off to Longview CEO Mark Burton for doing a tremendous job during the past two years. And a thanks to VenGrowth Managing General Partner Mike Cohen for bringing us in. We initially lost the term sheet “shoot out” to one of our venture debt competitors, but after 60 days of due diligence they reneged on their original “too good to be true” pricing. Mr. Cohen gave us a call and we were happy to oblige. We didn’t change one single term from our earlier proposal, even though we now knew that we were competing with no one. Mr. Burton worked his magic on the business and the rest is soon to be history. Three successive great outcomes is rare in Canadian tech land, and Mr. Burton is a couple of months away from achieving that difficult feat.

Longview’s software solutions are mission critical and Exact is wise to add this to their product offering.

MRM