goetzpartners advised OCEAN’s shareholders on the sale of the company to Orange Business Services

Paris, April 15th, 2015:

goetzpartners, the independent advisory firm, announces today it acted as exclusive financial advisor to the shareholders of OCEAN’s shareholders , a leading French provider of fleet management services, in the sale of the company to Orange Business Services, the B2B arm of Orange offering communication services and IT solutions in France and worldwide.

A key transaction in the fleet management business

Through this acquisition, Orange strengthens its leadership in the French fleet management market and expects to use OCEAN’s technological platform and field expertise to provide its clients with geolocation solutions that improve their operational, administrative and financial management. With 2 000 clients operating over 45 000 vehicles, OCEAN boosts Orange Business Services strategy in terms of connected services for corporate customers.

Hugues Archambault, Managing Director at goetzpartners in France, comments:

“We are delighted to have advised the shareholders of OCEAN, the largest independent fleet management player in France. This transaction demonstrates our ability to advise strategic moves in the growing European SaaS (Software as a Service) market. This transaction will enable Orange to generate strong technological and business synergies to serve its development and its ambitions in the Internet of Things”

About goetzpartners: Advisory for Strategy, M&A and Transformation

goetzpartners is an independent advisory firm for all key issues of entrepreneurial activity: Strategy, M&A and Transformation. This unique approach makes clients measurably more successful. Worldwide, some 250 professionals working out of 12 locations in 9 countries support these activities.
goetzpartners ranks among the 10 biggest German advisory firms (Lünendonk®). In WirtschaftsWoche magazine’s “Best of Consulting 2014” awards, the company took first place in the “Project Excellence” category.

About OCEAN: www.ocean.fr

Founded in 2003, OCEAN provides fleet management solutions, enabling businesses to manage their local fleets and improve the productivity of their mobile workforce by extracting business intelligence from real-time and historical vehicle data through 10 vertical-dedicated solutions. With revenues in excess of €10m and an installed base of ca. 45,000 vehicles, OCEAN is the third largest fleet management solutions provider in France. Its solutions are delivered as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).

About Orange Business Services: www.orange-business.com/fr

Orange Business Services is the B2B arm of Orange that provides communications services to companies, local government bodies and public sector organizations in the fields of cloud computing, mobility management, security services, conferencing solutions, Machine to Machine (M2M), etc. OBS generated revenues in excess of €6.3bn in 2014.