Seven Romanian and American investors paid 7 million dollars (4.8 million euros) to buy a minority stake (less than 7%) in Romanian software security solutions developer BitDefender.
The business, established by a family of Romanian entrepreneurs (Florin and Mariuca Talpes) after 1990, has become the most valuable Romanian brand in the IT industry, after private investment put the value of BitDefender at more than 100 million dollars (68 million euros).
Last fiscal year, BitDefender, which has recently broken off the Softwin group, posted turnover worth 252,000 euros, while Softwin's business reached 17.7 million euros, according to data available on the Finance Ministry website.
Over the last 17 years, several IT companies established by local entrepreneurs have been involved in transactions. They include Gecad (through RAV antivirus and now through the Axigen business), Siveco and Interakt Online - yet in none of these cases did the value of the company exceed 100 million dollars. BitDefender was established in 2001 as a unit of Softwin, fully held by Florin and Mariuca Talpes. The year 2007 marks the legal separation of BitDefender from Softwin and the shareholders towards the first private investment.
"This is only the beginning. The Talpes family is now open to foreign investments, for which we are also considering other projects- Ascenta (software solutions and consultancy i.e.), and Intuitext (educational software i.e.)," stated Florin Talpes, chairman of Softwin and BitDefender. "The shareholders of these companies may also change in 2008 or 2009. We are ready to open the list of shareholders, they are no longer family companies," the founder of Softwin added.
On January 1, 2008, Ascenta and Intuitext will become separate legal entities, as will Paxato, which provides call-centre type services.
"BitDefender's market value, which currently exceeds 100 million dollars (68 million euros), could reach several hundred million following floatation over the next two or three years. It might even exceed one billion in the long run," stated Horia Manda, the representative of the investor group.
Manda is the managing partner of the Romanian-American Enterprise Fund (RAEF) and of Balkan Accession Fund (BAF), which manages more than 200 million euros in the region, yet the investment in BitDefender is his own and not made on behalf of the funds he represents. He explained that the investors in BitDefender were not companies but individuals, who selected it as an investment because of its high growth potential.
"The company's products and technology, which are renowned worldwide, are positioned in such a way as to allow successful international expansion. With the investment and with our expertise we intend contribute to this expansion," Manda added.
BitDefender is now being audited, a process that will be completed at the end of the first half of next year. Talpes announced the auditor was a Big Four company (KPMG, Deloitte, Ernst & Young and PricewaterhouseCoopers). He added that Romanian-American Silicon Valley lawyer Andrei Manoliu had played a definitive role in the legal side of the deal.
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