Vitruvian Partners is preparing for a potential sale of its Finland-headquartered accountancy services and software provider Accountor, four sources familiar with the situation told this news service.

The UK-based sponsor has mandated JP Morgan to oversee the process, three of them added.

The sale process is at the preparatory stage, with no clear indication of timing yet, two of the sources said.

The asset is expected to generate more than EUR 60m in EBITDA for 2023, the two sources added. The company recorded revenues of EUR 260m in 2022, as per its website.

Accountor is likely to attract large international private equity firms, one of the sources said. Some sponsors have already indicated early interest in the potential sale, another of the sources said.

The company could either be sold in one, or the services and software businesses could be sold separately, one of the sources said.

This news service reported in 2020 that when the time comes for Vitruvian to exit, the business could be sold in two parts to maximise buyer interest and valuation. The software business has been deemed to be the more valuable part of the business, as per the same report.

Vitruvian acquired a majority stake in Accountor in 2015 through its 2013 vintage Vitruvian Investment Partnership Fund II.

Accountor’s roots go back to the 1989-establishment by Asko Schrey of what was known as Pretax.

One potential question mark around an upcoming sale would be Vitruvian’s ownership of Sweden-based Aspia – a direct competitor to Accountor that Vitruvian acquired from IK Partners in October, one of the sources and a banker tracking the situation noted, suggesting that the two companies would fit together well.

At the time of publishing, Accountor had a Likely to Exit score of 29 out of 100, according to Mergermarket’s LTE predictive algorithm*, heavily driven by sponsor exits in the region.

Accountor provides services including accounting, HR, payroll, financial management, and tax and legal consultancy, as well as related software solutions. It has offices in Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and Ukraine, as per its website.

Vitruvian, Accountor, and JP Morgan did not respond to requests for comment.

*Mergermarket’s LTE predictive analytics assign a score to sponsor-backed companies to help track and predict when an exit could occur through M&A, an IPO, a direct listing or a deSPAC transaction.