South East: HMT LLP advises Apiary Capital on its investment in fire and rescue software

Corporate finance adviser HMT LLP, led by Partner Paul Read and Senior Manager Corin Briault-Hutter, advised Apiary Capital on its investment in XVR, a platform for consolidating online compliance management and e-learning software businesses. Simultaneous with the investment from Apiary, XVR completed the bolt-on acquisition of learnPro eFireservice, a competency management and e-learning software provider to the NHS and the fire and rescue sector.

XVR’s suite of products, which includes a crisis scenario simulation platform, e-learning content library, a learning management system, and a workforce competency management platform, is used by over 450 fire, police, and healthcare organisations in more than 50 countries, to train 300,000 staff each year. XVR helps ensure that staff working in critical risk sectors in the UK and internationally have the required knowledge and skills to maintain public health and safety.

The market for e-learning content and software solutions is growing rapidly but remains highly fragmented. Through its buy-and-build strategy, XVR intends to extend its range of compliance and competency management software and e-learning solutions to critical risk sectors.

HMT undertook financial due diligence for Apiary on this transaction.

Jeniv Shah, Partner at Apiary commented: "HMT provided high quality work on this complex transaction, identifying the key issues early on and working tenaciously to help us complete the investment and acquisition in a timely and efficient manner."

About HMT

Established in 1992, HMT is an independent adviser in the South of England and London. It advises on all aspects of corporate finance transactions including lead advisory, due diligence, debt advisory, financial modelling and transactional tax. HMT’s clients include management teams, privately-owned businesses, private equity investors, public companies and debt providers.

About Apiary Capital

Apiary Capital invests in the education, healthcare, financial, business and technology services sectors. It acquires platform companies in fragmented markets and partners with its management teams to accelerate growth through a buy-and-build strategy. It typically invests in businesses valued between £10 million and £75 million.

About XVR

XVR Simulation was founded in 2000 by Steven Lohman and Martijn Boosman.

It is a developer of simulation technology with over 300 educators in 50 countries worldwide using XVR to train over 150.000 incident responders every year. XVR’s main user groups are schools and training centres in the fire and rescue services, police, and ambulance services.