Warburg Pincus picks adviser to sell airline services firm Accelya -sources

Accelya Solutions India

05/08/2019 16:32

By Andrés González and Pamela Barbaglia
    MADRID/LONDON, Aug 5 (Reuters) - The private equity owner of
European airline services firm Accelya has hired Bank of America
to sell the business in a deal that could value the company at
up to 1.5 billion euros $1.67 billion), two sources familiar
with the matter said.
    U.S. private equity firm Warburg Pincus, which has backed
Barcelona-based Accelya for just over two years, plans to launch
an auction process after the summer, the sources said.
    The company - which serves more than 200 airlines including
British Airways and EasyJet - is expected to appeal to both
industry players and other buyout funds, they said.
    Warburg Pincus and Bank of America declined to comment.
    Founded in 1976, Accelya specialises in financial,
commercial, cargo and analytics solutions and handles more than
5 billion financial transactions and 75 million tonnes of cargo
annually.
    Warburg Pincus bought Accelya from French private equity
firm Chequers Capital in 2017 and used it as a merger platform
for Mercator, a Dubai-based travel services group in which the
U.S. buyout firm had been an investor since 2014.
    When the merger was announced in February 2017 Warburg
Pincus estimated the combined entity to generate annual revenue
in excess of $200 million.
    One of the sources said Spanish rival Amadeus  AMA.MC ,
which has a market value of 30 billion euros and revenue margins
of around 40%, could be a possible bidder.
    "Amadeus could be keen to study an offer because they
initially expressed interest in Mercator," the source said,
cautioning that negotiations had yet to start.
    Accelya controls an Indian listed subsidiary, Accelya Kale
Solutions  AKSL.NS , which has a market value of about $162
million.
    Last year Accelya entered a partnership with Mastercard to
launch the Accelya Payment Gateway, a platform offering global
payment acceptance across an array of payment methods.

($1 = 0.8972 euros)

 (Editing by David Evans)
 ((pamela.barbaglia@thomsonreuters.com;  +442075427723; Reuters
Messaging: pamela.barbaglia.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))