With Cobepa, Scalian speeds up its development

On 21 March 2019, Scalian announced that Cobepa, the investment company, had acquired a majority stake in the Group’s equity alongside its management team and Andera Partners.
Cobepa, a leading private equity player with offices in Brussels and New York, has a broad international spread and a permanent capital base supported by several major entrepreneurial families.

The company has a very significant investment capacity, demonstrated by a diversified portfolio of investments estimated at €2.5 billion. With this operation, Scalian Group has reaffirmed the attractiveness of its development model, which combines expertise and innovation, entrepreneurial and human values with specialised services, acknowledged by its clients in the aeronautics, defence, transport, energy, telecommunications, public and financial sectors, over the last thirty years.

After significant growth since 2015, which has led to a threefold increase in revenue, Scalian is determined to pursue its development by continuing to invest and innovate in its core areas of expertise, namely digital systems and operations performance management. The 2019-2024 strategic plan, which coincides with the arrival of Cobepa, is built on the Group’s strong business positioning, its DNA, with the ambition of reaching 500 million euros of revenue in 2024, while maintaining a high cash-flow generation capacity.

The strategic plan will involve concerted deployment of 3 key factors:

• development of our international spread to serve client projects and win new markets;
• synergism between our management and digital activities for disruptive offers in Digital Transformation, Big Data, AI and Cybersecurity;
• managerial innovation and attracting the right talent.

Yvan Chabanne, CEO of Scalian, says: “With Andera Partners we are delighted to be working with Cobepa and its team; our shared ambition is to more than double in size by 2024, with 40% of our business coming from outside France. In particular, Cobepa will bring us the benefit of its network and experience to accelerate our development through external growth in our digital and management consulting fields in Europe and the Americas. We are committed to pursuing our investments in line with our expertise. Our organisation, structured around business divisions, guarantees that all our clients benefit from specialised teams and the capitalisation of our methods and know-how, with increasing synergism to meet the new mutual needs of all industries. Our goal with Cobepa is to integrate new companies as industrial partners as of 2019; some of these companies have already expressed their willingness to join our project, as it also makes sense for them. All experts and passionate about their activities, besides joining a Group with a friendly work environment, they are above all keen to help enhance our specialised activities and offers. The Executive Committee and all Scalian employees are involved in this project. Our vision and objectives are clear, our teams’ talents and energies have been mobilised, our clients trust us, and our resources are equal to our ambition. The prospect is one of an exciting adventure for our teams and one that we will share with our clients.”

About Cobepa

Cobepa is a private equity firm with a permanent capital base, and intervenes in Europe and North America through its offices in Brussels and New York. Managing a diversified portfolio of around fifteen investments valued at more than €2.5 billion, Cobepa invests in companies that are leaders in their respective markets through the deployment of a differentiated business model and that are led by management teams that have demonstrated their ability to generate significantly higher growth than the average in their markets.

www.cobepa.be

About Andera Partners

Andera Partners, founded in 2001 within the Edmond de Rothschild Group, is a reference in unlisted investment in France and abroad. It manages more than €2 billion in life sciences (BioDiscovery), capital development and transmission (Winch Capital in mid cap and Cabestan Capital in small cap) and non-sponsored mezzanine debt (ActoMezz).

Fully owned by its teams, Andera Partners places great store on service to entrepreneurs and respect for its partners. The management company is also a signatory to the Principles for Responsible Investment (UNPRI) issued by the United Nations and aimed at getting companies to adopt better environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) practices. Based in Paris, Andera Partners is an AMF-approved management company with 60 employees, including more than 40 investment professionals. It is structured around a partnership and is run by a college of 10 partners. The performance of its funds, the diversity of its offer and its organisational model have enabled Andera Partners to distinguish itself in the markets in which it operates and to be recognised as a major player.

www.anderapartners.com