Translink Corporate Finance is pleased to announce that Foliateam Group has raised 40m€ from a pool of private equity investors consisting of Societe Generale Capital Partenaires (SGCP), Bpifrance, Etoide Capital and private debt lender Idinvest. Translink acted as the exclusive financial adviser to Foliateam Group.

Dominique Bayon, Founder, together with Laurent Depommier-Cotton and Jean-Pierre Brier, co-founders, have turned Foliateam into a leading player in the BtoB telecom services in France. Backed by a team of entrepreneurs, the group, which is able to offer a solid alternative to its clients, has grown through 16 acquisitions over the last 15 years, most of which were in distressed situations.

The strategic plan, Digital Wings 2019, was a key in the history of Foliateam. Over the last 5 years, the company has doubled in size, to become a leading alternative BtoB telecom services provider in France, one of the few that manages its own critical infrastructure, while preparing the future with a management team taking over the operations. This strategic plan was backed and fueled by Bpifrance and France Valley Digital Wings after their investment in 2015. Today, the company has more than 4,500 clients spread over 10,000 sites, and generates over 50m€ of sales. With a staff of 330 employees, including 24 managers who are shareholders, Foliateam is a leading BtoB Telecom and Cloud services provider in France.

Dominique Bayon adds: “This important success, beyond my vision of where the company must be on this ever evolving BtoB telecom and cloud services market, is a collective project backed by a number of people I would like to thank: my co-founders, 13 business angels, our board members, all our business partners, clients, suppliers, manufacturers and software providers, our bankers and professional investors, our legal advisors, our auditors and our investment bankers, each and every single managers and employees of Foliateam, and my relatives who helped me throughout this adventure. This collective strength will be key in the future success of Foliateam.”

During the year 2020, the group of managers, led by the new Board of Management consisting of Bruno David (President), Jean-Baptiste Perraudin (Chief Executive), Francis Houot (Deputy Chief Executive) and Franck Marconnet (Assistant Chief Executive), has worked on building the next strategic vision for the coming years: UP2026. The four managers will take over the operation from Dominique Bayon. They can count of the support of the founders who will stay on board as members of the Supervisory board, with Dominique Bayon as its president.

Thanks to this new round of financing, the company will have the resources to reach the goal set in its UP2026 plan. The plan is to grow the company up to 100m€ of sales and become one of the leading providers for secured multi-cloud collaboration and customer relationship telecom services in France, thanks to a unique UCaaS catalog of offers and a one-of-a-kind expertise on Avaya, Alcatel, Mitel, Kiamo, Microsoft Teams & Zoom platforms. UP2026 is built around one major challenge: provide all clients with premium and digitalized services. This will materialize in an above market average client satisfaction and investment in cybersecurity. Also, Foliateam will remain open to new acquisitions.

“I spent 18 years of my professional career working to grow Foliateam. I’m proud and happy to be appointed President of the Board of Management, and I can’t wait to continue on our path with our long term investors and the support of the founders in the Supervisory Board. With UP2026, we will turn Foliateam into an innovative telecom service provider, emphasizing on digitalization. We will focus on the performance of our cloud and cybersecurity services delivered to our clients” comments Bruno David, new President of the Board of Management. “The market is very dynamic and enthusiastic about cloud collaboration and customer relationship solutions. SDWAN is surely becoming a new standard for networks, and cybersecurity is key to most of our clients. We surely have tremendous growth opportunities in all these fields, both for our group and for our people.”

Julien Pélissier, Investment Manager at Société Générale Capital Partenaires (SGCP), declares: “SGCP is honored to be have been chosen by the shareholders of Foliateam to back the managerial transition and fuel the ambition of UP20206. Foliateam did a great job switching to a business model of integrator/service provider of telecom services in the cloud for SME, blue chip and public companies. The demand for UCaaS and more broadly collaboration tools is booming. Together with Bpifrance and Etoile Capital, we’re fully committed to share our resources and networks to support this longterm project.”

“Being part of this transaction is completely at the heart of Bpifrance’s mission: supporting growing companies, help them succeed in the management transition, and bring them into our accelerator programs.” says Luc Doyennel, Investment Manager at Bpifrance. “I witnessed the evolution of Foliateam from a small to a mid-cap company. I am confident and convinced I will witness other significant changes in the near future.”

Eric Gallerne, Managing Partner at Idinvest, says: “we’re very happy that the shareholders chose Idinvest as their sole debt lender in this process of management transition. We’re really excited about the opportunity to work together with the new Board of Management, and we can’t wait to help and support them in the next development phase for the group”

“We’re truly honored to have been appointed has exclusive investment banker by Foliateam in this process” adds Marc IRISSON, Partner in charge of the TMT practice at Financière Monceau Translink France. “Despite the context, we received a very positive feedback from the market, thanks to a tremendous management team and the quality of the project the team presented to the investors. We ran a very quick process between June and October, and the process remained competitive till the very end. The management team had to choose from two very qualitative offers backed by highly recognized investors. This is our 4th transaction in the TMT industry this year in France, and the 5th transaction in the telecom industry in France over the last years.”