Pollen Street makes second Irish acquisition, announces £400m fund

Company that previously acquired Capitalflow buys Vision Blue for undisclosed sum

Pollen Street Capital, a London-based venture capital company and formerly the private equity business of Royal Bank of Scotland, has made its second acquisition in Ireland after snapping up software firm Vision Blue for an undisclosed sum.

The company, which on Wednesday announced a new £400 million (€451 million) fund, previously acquired Capitalflow, a specialist provider of asset backed loans to SMEs in May 2016. It has since injected €35 million of equity into the firm, which has funded more than 800 Irish businesses since it began trading.

Vision Blue, formerly known as Insolv, was established in 2002. The Dublin-based company, which provides software solutions to the finance sector, counts the likes of Grant Thornton, Deloitte, PwC and RSM among its clients.

It is one of the leading insolvency case management system providers in Ireland for both corporate and personal case types with an average of 4,000 applications processed each month.

READ MORE

Vision Blue reported accumulated income of €1.02 million for the 12 months to the end of December 2016.

Pollen Street, which focuses on investing in businesses in the financial services sector, has invested more than £1.2 billion over the last decade in a range of companies.

"We have ambitious plans to extend our service beyond this to Canada, Australia and New Zealand and today's announcement is part of our growth strategy," said Colin Brown, chief executive of Vision Blue.

Charlie Taylor

Charlie Taylor

Charlie Taylor is a former Irish Times business journalist