Private equity firms offer $1.4 bn for Dutch software group Unit4

Dutch software group Unit4 today said that private equity firms had approached it to buy the company for an indicative price of €35 per share or €1 billion ($1.4 billion).

The Netherlands company, based in Sliedrecht, said that following these approaches, it has engaged in exploratory discussions and has appointed ING Corporate Finance and Oppenheimer Europe Ltd as financial advisors and De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek as legal advisor to assist in the process.

''Consistent with their fiduciary duties, the managing board and the supervisory board of Unit4 will be carefully evaluating these expressions of interest and in their decision making will take the interests of all stakeholders, including the shareholders, into full consideration. There is no certainty that these discussions will lead to a public offer being made for the shares in Unit4,'' the company said in a statement.

Unit4 is a global cloud-focused business software company focusing on public sector and commercial services companies.

The company incorporates a number of the world's leading change embracing software brands including Agresso, its flagship ERP suite for mid-sized services intensive organisations, Coda, its financial management software, and FinancialForce.com, the cloud applications company formed with investment from salesforce.com.

The Euronext Amsterdam-listed company has over 4,300 employees, operations in 26 countries, and posted 2012 revenues of €470 million.