Bain Capital raises its offer to buy Swiss cloud software company SoftwareOne to $3.7 billion

Last month we wrote about Bain Capital after the private equity firm offered to buy SoftwareOne in a deal that valued the Switzerland-based software and cloud technology solutions company at 2.9 billion Swiss francs ($3.21 billion).

Despite the massive offer, SoftwareOne’s board rejected Bain’s offer. However, the offer did receive backing from some of the company’s founding shareholders, namely Daniel von Stockar, B Curti Holding, and Rene Gilli, who collectively own 29.1% of the company.

Fast forward a month later, Bain Capital has decided to sweeten the deal and improve its offer to about 3.2 billion Swiss francs ($3.72 billion), according to a Thursday report from Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter. The new proposal from Bain amounts to roughly 20 francs per share for the Swiss software management company. As of now, both SoftwareOne and Bain Capital have chosen not to comment on the report.

The newly reported offer represents a significant premium of 43.6% compared to SoftwareOne’s closing price on May 31, which was when Bain Capital initially presented its offer to acquire the Swiss company at a valuation of $3.2 billion.

With a foundation dating back to 1985, the Sans, Switzerland-Founded headquartered SoftwareOne is a renowned global provider of comprehensive software and cloud technology solutions. The company specializes in assisting companies with the management of software purchases from renowned vendors such as Microsoft, Adobe, and IBM. The company went public on the Swiss exchange in 2019.

Back in June, Bain said: “The founding shareholders provide their full commitment to the proposed transaction and to Bain Capital as the partner for the transaction, and they expect to roll over a significant part of their investment to help facilitate it.”

In its statement a month ago, SoftwareOne confirmed that the “indicative, unsolicited and non-binding offer from Bain Capital” it had received was supported by those shareholders. However, the board, with von Stockar recusing himself, “unanimously agreed that the proposal materially undervalues the company and is not sufficiently substantiated.”