Longview Solutions Acquired by Marlin Equity Partners
Longview Solutions, one of our ‘core performance management vendors for 2014’, has been acquired by Marlin Equity Partners. Their previous parent, Exact Holding, had purchased them in 2007 and let them run fairly independently. However, as often happens with acquisitions anticipated synergies never materialized and strategies changed. Exact ended up placing Longview into a Specialized Solutions group with other non-core businesses and essentially started looking for a buyer. During this period of time there were constraints around business changes Longview could make and limited funds available to invest in new opportunities. With their acquisition last week by Marlin, all that has changed. Marlin Equity sees Longview as a platform for growth in the performance management space and plans to invest in organic growth as well as strategic acquisitions.
We view this a net positive for Longview and its customers. For quite some time now Longview has been doing fairly well in spite of its position within Exact. With Marlin at the helm we expect to see much more activity and a more aggressive Longview Solutions. This should also lead to an expanded product portfolio. Let’s not forget though that the likely goal of Marlin, like most private equity firms, is to invest in and grow the business so they can ultimately sell it or take it public. This is certainly several years down the road, but something for prospective purchasers to be aware of.
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