Cegid Group acquires Portuguese technology company PHC Business Software

Cuatrecasas advised Cegid Group (Cegid), a French group and European leader in cloud-based business management solutions for finance, human resources, accounting, retail, and entrepreneurship, on acquiring PHC Business Software (PHC), a Portuguese technology company that played a key role in the digital transformation of the Portuguese market.

 PHC has a portfolio of 37,000 client companies and 170,000 users across Portugal, Spain, Angola, and Mozambique. For this reason, Cegid Group’s acquisition of the company—with the incorporation of 262 employees—boosts its growth in the market for management software solutions for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) on the Iberian Peninsula and in Portuguese-speaking Africa.

The multidisciplinary Cuatrecasas team, led by Mariana Norton dos Reis, co-coordinator of the Corporate and M&A Practice Area, included Filipa Teixeira Diniz, Inês Camara Pestana, Mariano Ucar Innerarity, Samantha Cyrne, Jorge Serrote, Flavia Terrés Lafita, and Megan Hackney, all from the same practice area. Other lawyers from different practice areas included Pedro Marques Bom, António Souto Moura, and Carolina Lopes Mendes, from the Antitrust & Competition Practice Area; Miguel de Almada, Catarina Marques Pinto, and Cláudia Calado, from Litigation and International Arbitration; Sandra Silveira, Lucas Peiro de la Rocha, and Liliana Almeida de Moura, from Labor and Employment Law; Lavínia Pinto Marques and Lucas Battistello Espindola, from Intellectual Property and Technology and Digital Media; Manuel Barbosa Moura, from Banking & Finance and Capital Markets; and Inês Carrilho de Matos, from White Collar Crime.

Mariana Norton dos Reis commented, “This transaction involved complex legal aspects in the four jurisdictions where PHC is present—Portugal, Spain, Mozambique, and Angola. Therefore, it was essential to have a team with extensive experience in international transactions, with specialists from multiple areas such as corporate, labor, intellectual property, and competition law, to address the legal issues raised and find solutions that enabled the transaction to be closed within a tight timeframe.”

According to a statement issued by both Cegid and PHC, the acquisition of PHC aligns with Cegid’s growth strategy, following recent acquisitions of EBP in France, Microdata in Spain, and an exclusive agreement to acquire sevdesk in Germany.