The corporate services space has always been a good fit for private equity: asset-light, recurring revenues, and plenty of scope for M&A.

Warburg Pincus moved for Acclime because it saw the opportunity to meld these characteristics with a compelling APAC growth story. The private equity firm believes the region is rich with potential customers that need on-the-ground support as they navigate an increasingly complex environment.

“Many businesses in the region, traditionally family-run and managing operations internally, are now professionalising and increasingly outsourcing to specialists,” said Saurabh Agarwal, a managing director and head of Southeast Asia private equity at Warburg Pincus.

“This shift is even more pronounced for companies expanding cross-border into Asia. Coupled with stronger GDP growth and higher rates of business formation, this makes the region highly attractive and well-suited to our services.”

Warburg Pincus has agreed to buy 100% of Acclime, with the company’s existing management set to reinvest in the business on completion. The transaction reportedly values the target at USD 950m-USD 1bn, based on EBITDA of USD 40m-USD 50m in 2024.

This is the private equity firm’s first foray into corporate services in Asia, although multiple opportunities in the sector have been evaluated over the years. Conviction in pursuing Acclime – and overcoming rival bidders in a competitive process – was underpinned by the company’s integrated regional presence and experienced leadership team.

Acquisition-led growth

Acclime was established in 2019 by Martin Crawford, who previously spent nine years as CEO of Vistra, a global corporate services business acquired by EQT, which subsequently merged it with Tricor. Working with co-founder Debby Davidson, he rapidly built an operation of significant scale. There are 28 offices across 18 Asian markets with 2,000 employees serving 17,000 clients.

Crawford served as CEO until early 2024, when he became executive chairman. This is not an off-ramp. He is rolling over a substantial portion of his equity into the Warburg Pincus investment vehicle and will stay in post for at least the next three years, overseeing M&A efforts.

Acclime is very much about acquisition-led growth, having completed 56 add-on acquisitions. These were executed on a hand-to-mouth basis, relying on internal cash flow and external financing, according to Crawford. Part of the expansion was supported using a USD 150m credit facility from Barings. Under Warburg Pincus, it will have the firepower to do more.

“We are very much an M&A machine, but it gets to a point where you need more capital,” said Crawford. “Now we have a partner with much deeper pockets and big aspirations, and we’re very excited to be working with them.”

The original Acclime operation was formed by aggregating six businesses across Hong Kong, Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam. There were 150 staff. Within a year, headcount had doubled, and the company was in four new markets: Cambodia, mainland China, Malaysia, and Singapore.

The footprint expanded into the Philippines and Myanmar in 2021, Australia and India in 2022, New Zealand in 2023, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in 2024. Near-term priorities include strengthening the Middle East presence and entering Japan.

“I wanted to create a ubiquitous platform across the region where the standards of service delivery would be consistent, no matter the location. Whatever your entry point into Acclime, you could make that the one entry point you dealt with from then on,” Crawford said.

To this end, the platform allows clients to engage a single relationship manager for seamless access across all geographies it serves, requiring only one onboarding process and a master agreement. This eliminates redundant paperwork and provides a unified service standard, a distinct advantage in a fragmented market.

Execution and advisory

Acclime claims two other key points of differentiation. First, it often pursues multiple acquisitions in a single market to establish a full suite of services, from company registration and reporting to accounting and payroll. With only minor gaps remaining, the focus has shifted to scale and efficiency. Aura, an in-house artificial intelligence and automation platform, was launched last year.

Second, Acclime didn’t copy the traditional outsourced corporate services model and restrict itself to execution. Strategic advice was on the menu from the outset, which means PwC might be a closer competitor than CSC. Crawford observed that clients often seek guidance on market entry strategy, partner selection, government subsidies, and tax optimisation before moving to implementation.

Agarwal described the company’s roll-up strategy as disciplined, selective, and suitable for an industry populated by large global players at one end and tens of thousands of small, one-country providers at the other. The objective is not scale alone but delivering an end-to-end solution for clients that value a single, trusted partner.

“Unlike highly local, single-country providers, Acclime operates as a cohesive regional platform, deeply understanding each market’s complexities while leveraging shared capabilities and automation,” he said.

“This enables a higher quality, more targeted client experience, something that is difficult for both single-country players and broad global firms to achieve. It has created a strong product-market fit in the region, which we find very attractive.”