Alma Advisors advises the shareholders of Axios Group on its sale

Alma Advisors acted as exclusive financial adviser to the shareholders of Axios Group on the sale of the business. Axios Group is a Greek fintech group whose software and managed services are used by banks, insurers and payment institutions across Southern Europe.

The shareholders wanted a partner, not an exit at any price.

The founders had built the group over two decades and were not under pressure to sell. What they wanted was a counterparty who would fund the next stage of the platform, keep the engineering team in Greece, and hold the customer relationships they had spent years earning. Price mattered, but it was not the only term being negotiated.

Our first work was not a process. It was six months of preparation: cleaning up the reporting, separating the recurring revenue from the project revenue so that the quality of the earnings was visible, and settling what the shareholders would and would not accept before any counterparty saw a page.

A competitive process reached the right counterparty.

We approached a targeted list of strategic acquirers and financial sponsors, in Greece and abroad, through the IMAP network. A narrow, well-qualified list beats a wide one in the mid-market: it protects confidentiality, and it keeps the seller in a position to choose rather than to react.

Competitive tension held to the final round. The shareholders selected a buyer whose plan for the business matched what they had asked for at the outset, and the transaction closed on the terms agreed in the heads.