Leading growth investor Synova Capital (“Synova”) is delighted to announce the sale of portfolio company Meritsoft to Cognizant [NASDAQ: CTSH], one of the world’s leading professional services companies. The transaction has generated an initial return to Synova of 4.0x invested capital and an IRR of 47% with further returns anticipated under the terms of an earn-out agreed with Cognizant.

Meritsoft is a leading provider of intelligent software solutions to global capital markets participants enabling clients to automate post-trade processes, increase efficiency and comply with increasingly stringent regulatory requirements.

Synova’s partnership with the founders, Kerril Burke & Paul Burke, led to a significant investment in the Meritsoft team with employee numbers increasing threefold, including the strengthening of the sales, marketing and development teams.

During Synova’s period of investment, the management team focused the business on the high growth areas of process automation and analytics. In addition, Synova supported the establishment of an office in New York, which was instrumental in Meritsoft securing a number of Tier 1 Wall Street banks as customers.

Since investment, Meritsoft’s revenues and earnings have grown fourfold.

Randall Winn of 22C Capital, and Non-Executive Chairman Peter Little, invested alongside Synova, making invaluable contributions to the business.

Philip Shapiro, a Managing Partner of Synova and a Non-Executive Director of Meritsoft, commented: “We partnered with an excellent management team to help accelerate growth in a fantastic business both in the UK and internationally. The exit is a result of the skill and hard work of that team and their strong working relationship with Synova. With a record pipeline and compelling market drivers we wish the team every success in the next stage of their development.”

Kerril Burke, Founder & CEO of Meritsoft, said: “We have benefited from a great partnership with Synova, which has been a key part of Meritsoft achieving its strong growth. Personally, I have enjoyed working with the entire Synova team and have found their strategic counsel and operational discipline to be particularly valuable as we have scaled the business both in the UK and internationally.”