Francisco Partners is an American private equity firm focused exclusively on investments in technology and technology-enabled services businesses.
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14 Facts About Francisco Partners
2.
Francisco Partners was founded in August 1999, in Menlo Park, California, during the emergence of dedicated technology buyout firms.
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3.
Francisco Partners purchased Smart Modular from the Solectron Corporation in 2004, with Smart Modular going public two years later.
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4.
Also in 2014, Francisco Partners invested in the information technology company CoverMyMeds, and paid $120 million for a majority stake, in the controversial spy company NSO Group, sold in 2019.
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5.
Francisco Partners joined with Elliott Management in June 2016 to buy the SonicWall, as well as Quest Software, subsidiaries from Dell as part of the spinoff of Dell Software.
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6.
The SonicWall investment attracted some controversy in the press, as Francisco Partners had invested in the competitor WatchGuard, going against norms in the private equity industry.
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7.
In late 2016, Francisco Partners launched its Agility fund, raising approximately $600 million of committed capital to focus on smaller technology deals.
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8.
Shortly afterwards, Francisco Partners invested in Dynamo Software, Pet Circle, Discovery Education, and myON, the latter of which was sold in 2018.
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9.
In 2017, Francisco Partners sold CoverMyMeds to McKesson, and Paymetric to Vantiv, and sold PayLease and Corsair.
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10.
In June 2017, Francisco Partners acquired Sandvine, a Canadian public company that was combined with Procera, for $444 million.
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11.
The firm's fifth fund, Francisco Partners V, was formed at the end of 2017 with approximately $4 billion of committed capital.
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12.
In 2020, Francisco Partners joined Diligent Corporation's Modern Leadership Initiative and pledged to create five new board roles among its portfolio companies for gender or ethnically diverse candidates.
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13.
Francisco Partners specializes in financing divisional buyouts, take privates of public companies, sponsored mergers and acquisitions, growth equity financing, recapitalizations, and restructurings.
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14.
Top-ranked in 2020 among tech specialist private equity firms, Francisco Partners has a list of portfolio companies that changes frequently.
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