This week's €392 million telecom products deal by an Atlantic Bridge-led consortium is Europe's biggest buyout this year, writes Caroline Madden.

In its most audacious move yet, Irish technology private equity firm Atlantic Bridge - with the backing of heavyweight private investors such as Dermot Desmond and Denis O'Brien - has pulled off not only its biggest deal to date, but the biggest buyout seen in Europe so far this year.

The acquisition of Logica CMG's telecom products business for €392 million by an Atlantic Bridge-led consortium was first announced back in February. The deal was completed this week with the intervening months being spent patiently tying up all the regulatory and legal loose ends that accompany a deal of such proportions.

From its inception, this deal has been marked by patience. Atlantic Bridge has long had its sights set on the division - now known as Acision - but had to bide its time until a window of opportunity opened up.

"Basically we've been pursuing the company for quite some time now," says Atlantic Bridge chief executive Brian Long.

"I think Logica felt that they wanted to make some acquisitions before they would spin out something."

When Logica finally embarked on a spending spree last year, Atlantic Bridge's patience paid off - the business came into play and a deal was struck.

Atlantic Bridge led the deal, but brought in the financial might of US industrial holding company Access Industries.

Coffers were also bolstered by a number of private clients and, in a major coup, the firm has recently brought on board global private equity firm HarbourVest Partners. According to Long, this is the first time that HarbourVest has ever worked with an Irish entity.

Acision itself has a pretty impressive track record. It pioneered SMS messaging, and is now the leading market provider of text and multimedia messaging.

But what makes Atlantic Bridge so sure that Acision will perform better as a standalone entity rather than it did as a division of a multinational company?

"The reason for separating it from its parent was that it's a completely different business - it was a product company selling products in the telecommunications market, and the parent company was really a services company," explains Long. "Now this company can have a fantastic independent future focusing purely on products."

Acision is now free to partner companies such as IBM should the opportunity arise whereas, in the past, it was limited to working with Logica, he adds.

"We've got a very clear plan of what we're going to do here," he continues. "This company is going to own messaging in all its forms - it's going to own the marketplace and dominate it. And it's going to dominate the enabling of any kind of digital content on the cell phone."

If the team at Atlantic Bridge manages to bring this vision to fruition, Long says there's no reason why Acision cannot be floated within the next couple of years. "This company has a turnover of half a billion dollars a year and it's profitable, so it could go public on its own."

In terms of technology experience, Atlantic Bridge is certainly bringing a lot to the table. Four members of the firm have been appointed to the board of Acision, including Long, who founded the Nasdaq-listed Irish group Parthus, which merged with Ceva five years ago.

And in a neat twist of fate, Larry Quinn will take up the reins as the new chairman.

Quinn, who is now a venture partner with Atlantic, was one of the founders of SMS technology development company Aldiscon, which was bought by Logica.

Acision joins 10 other technology companies already occupying the Atlantic Bridge stable - including Firecomms, Accuris and Nero - and Long isn't ruling out the possibility of mergers in the offing.

"Today they're separate, but obviously we're all the time looking at scaling up and getting some critical mass, and consolidation is always one way of doing that. We don't have any immediate plans, but that's always an option."

As for the growth path that has been mapped out for Acision, does Long plan to achieve this organically or through acquisitions? "We will do both," he states. "Obviously there's a very good engineering resource there - we've got about 600 R&D people. But we also know that there are a lot of very smart young companies around Europe, and indeed in Ireland, that would be interesting to look at."