Primed to be the Italian digital transformation champion
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STATUS
Active
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Year
2020
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LOCATION
Rome
KEY TRANSACTION DETAILS
- 2020 Investment (Bain Capital Private Equity)
BUSINESS OVERVIEW
Leading provider of digital transformation IT services and vertical software solutions to private and public sector in Italy.
€1.3B
Revenue in FY2021
11,600
Employees
60+
Offices in Europe and the Americas
THE BAIN CAPITAL ADVANTAGE AT WORK
Bain Capital has made significant investments in tech services, as we have come to appreciate their potential as a channel to support the multi-decade digital transformation megatrend. Be it the gradual diffusion of process automation or cloud-delivered technologies, enterprises are hungry for a helping hand as they digitize. Our global investments in the sector, including Genpact and Brillio, have served exactly this role.
At the same time, through our past and current investments in TeamSystem and Nexi, we identified the under-penetration of technology in Italy and the resulting potential for growth as a high-conviction macro trend to invest behind in Europe. The Italian economy is in need of investments in digital transformation. According to Gartner, Italian IT services spend accounted for 0.7% of GDP in 2018 compared to 2.3% in the UK. This sets the stage for a catch-up in Italian tech services spend, which has accelerated during Covid and is going to continue, in part due to the macro support measures being taken by the European Union (e.g. the Recovery Fund).
As a consequence, we were able to leverage our global sector expertise and local knowledge in Europe to identify Engineering as a unique investment in the European IT services sector. We acquired the business in 2020. The Company is the leading provider of digital transformation IT services and vertical software solutions for enterprises and government in Italy. We saw the opportunity to back the local champion in IT services to grow organically and inorganically and, at the same time, improve its go-to-market, operations and portfolio of activities to accelerate growth and profitability. We also saw the opportunity to invest in M&A to better address the Italian market and add capabilities that can inflect the trend toward high-growth cloud services.
Since the acquisition, through our deep portfolio group and investment team resources, we have been helping the company strengthen its leadership in the Italian market and expand its presence in the most attractive areas of the technology services market organically and through several add-on acquisitions.
Engineering is the leading local champion in IT services in Italy and, as such, is uniquely positioned to be a channel for the digitalization of the Italian economy (enterprises and government) and the penetration of modern cloud and digital technologies in the country. As Bain Capital, we have been helping them to invest in capabilities to capture this opportunity organically and through significant M&A.
