03 Dec 2013

Abacus e-Media is one of the UK’s leading providers of content management systems (CMS) and audience development platforms for the media, publishing and public sectors.

The global web content management market is approximately $1bn in size and is projected to grow at c.14% from 2009 to 2014, twice as fast as the overall enterprise software market according to research specialists Gartner.

Customers include some of the most influential companies in the media sector with key clients including Centaur Media, Thomson Reuters, UBM, EMAP, Christie’s, Condé Nast and The Law Society.

BGF, which has invested £2.3m of growth equity into Abacus, is an independent fund with capital of up to £2.5 billion, backed by five of the UK’s main banking groups - Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, RBS, and Standard Chartered.

Steve Feigen, CEO of Abacus, said: “BGF’s investment will help us to drive the development of our ADvance and Webvision platforms and to extend our client base much more quickly than we could otherwise have hoped to do. It will also enable us to move more swiftly into other subscription-based markets, the recent adoption of ADvance by Christie’s having provided a clear illustration of strong demand from the wider marketplace.”

Simon Moynagh, Investment Director at ICON, added: “We are extremely pleased to have worked with one of the leaders in enterprise software for the media industry to secure such a high-calibre investor. The investment will allow the company to focus on growing its recurring income streams as it transitions further to a SaaS business model.”