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February 23, 2007
Xchanging Planning IPO
Xchanging, a London–based business process outsourcing company founded in 1998 with the backing of General Atlantic, is considering an IPO, reports Financial Times. The offering would be on the LSE and would possibly value Xchanging at around £500M.
If the company floats at that valuation, it would be a good return for the investors and the founder, but also a success story that begs the question: how many opportunities to create billion dollar companies like this have been missed in the past 7 or 8 years because VCs in Europe were drip-feeding the venture.
The firm's story reveals an unusal level risk-taking on the side of its VC-backer General Atlantic, even if one could argue that it isn't a pure tech venture, it's an IT services company. It financed the founder, David Andrews, with £60M to startup when all he had was a business plan. Other VCs in Europe tabled offers for sums of about €1M, according to a feature story in Financial News published in 2005.
Xchanging got a further commitment of £50M a few years later and has completed a couple of acquisitions of smaller rivals and a joint venture it was involved in.
In the meantime, it went from zero to £260M in annual sales by 2005 and employs 3,000 in 10 countries.
Since August of last year the company has disclosed almost a billion dollars worth of back-office outsourcing contracts (since there are some undisclosed amounts for new contracts it may even have pushed it above that figure).
View Xchanging site
Read - General Atlantic May Float UK Unit (ft)
Read - No Limit To Xchanging Ambition (financial news)
Posted on February 23, 2007 07:45 AM | Posted to News And Updates | Permalink
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