International outreach

What is the deal?

The sale of Paris-based datatech company Zeenea to HCLSoftware, a subsidiary of HCLTech, which is publicly traded in India, and has a market cap of almost $60bn. The deal completed in September 2024. HCL paid €24m for 100% of the shares, which, using HCL’s revenue numbers, gave a 9.2x multiple. Most general software M&A valuations are in the 4x-to-5x multiple range right now so we achieved a strong outcome. 

Zeenea offers a cloud-based data catalogue and data lineage platform – what HCLTech apparently needed. Zeenea’s customer base helped, too – headquartered in France, it has many multinational customers across Europe. Zeenea CEO Luc Legardeur and the entire team are staying on, excited by the opportunity to grow their company with the resources of HCL.

How were you introduced to the deal?

Even though I live in California and Luc lives in France, my specialisation in AI and datatech got his attention. I like getting to know interesting companies in all those subsectors and Zeenea was one of the 2,000-plus companies on my watch list. I also talk regularly with strategic and financial acquirers on what they want to buy – many were interested in the data catalogue sector. I reached out to Luc. I don’t think selling was on his mind when we first spoke, but I could see his product was differentiated and there would be interested potential buyers.

What was the process?

Zeenea had €2.6m of revenue in 2023 and HCL said they had a profoundly outsized product that was validated by many demanding enterprise customers. Being a small company in France, Zeenea was not very well-known worldwide. So rather than a standard auction sale process we ran more of a market education approach, focused on strategic fit. We targeted specific potential buyers who had product synergies. It was that product-centric rather than financial approach that garnered interest. 

We whittled several interested parties down to just a few. At first, I was sceptical of HCL – it is a huge company I had little experience with and thought Zeenea was too small. But they reassured us about their interest throughout the process. Their data business Actian sponsored the deal and the number and seniority of people involved showed they were serious. There was a strong personal connection between Actian and Zeenea’s management. 

Who were the other advisers?

HCL carried out the financial, tax, HR and commercial due diligence in-house and used Simmons & Simmons in France for legal advice. We used French transactional lawyers from McDermott, Will & Emery and corporate counsel from French law firm Numa.

What were the challenges?

Because Zeenea was a small company with just a few people running the deal, we were quickly overwhelmed. Nadia Sidhoum was Zeenea’s CFO, but was also responsible for other day-to-day operations and HR. She already had too much on her plate, so we brought in John Carroll as a transactional CFO to help with financial modelling and diligence. He was tremendously helpful; he’s British but lives in France, speaks French and has great CFO experience. However, Luc is an experienced entrepreneur and has exited multiple businesses. His work ethic was amazing, and he kept his team motivated throughout. Time zones were a challenge: HCL had people in India, England and the US; Zeenea and the lawyers were in France; and we were in London and California.