At the beginning of November, the Dutch Coin International took over the Belgian and Luxembourg activities of international company, Sungard. This means that COIN is now the market leader in physical workplace recovery services in the Benelux. Stratfield advised and assisted COIN during the takeover.

COIN was already the market leader in physical workplace recovery services in the Netherlands. In addition, COIN offers secure online continuity, cyber security solutions and data recovery & cloud services. COIN has many renowned financial service providers and organisations, government bodies, regulators, logistic organizations and medical companies and organizations among its clients. They purchase services such as workplace, data and/or telephone recovery if they are confronted with cyber and ransomware incidents, power failures or other calamities such as fire.

Complex

The takeover of the Belgian and Luxembourg Sungard services fits in with COIN’s growth strategy. However, owing to Sungard’s organisational structure, the takeover was complex. Leendert Stam from Stratfield said this about it: ‘As we have already said, COIN did not take over the whole of Sungard, but only the Belgian and Luxembourg activities. This was complicated because these activities were intertwined with those of the international organisation of Sungard. For example, support was provided from Sungard France, while the management had its headquarters in the UK. The Sungard board of directors and the corporate finance assistance operated from the US. This meant that matching and integrating activities and processes had to take place very carefully after the transaction. And yes, this obviously had an influence on the agreements that were set out in the purchase agreement.’

Good deal

The relationship between COIN and Stratfield goes back to 2018. Richard Zwart from Stratfield: ‘We were then able to assist with a management buy-out. Since then, we have remained in contact. This also led to Stratfield being the designated party to advise the COIN management board and to assist with the takeover. This has led to a good deal for all parties which was settled at the beginning of November. The fact that we also participated in the takeover of Sungard using risk-bearing capital shows that Stratfield and COIN have full confidence in each other and in the future.’