Transactions
October 2018
Charlotte, NC
has received an equity investment from
Jacksonville, FL
Background
Zenmonics is a very fast growing North Carolina-based provider of application development, process management, systems integration, application support and maintenance, project management, application testing, performance engineering and monitoring, and system modernization to the banking and finance sectors, and software vendors. The company’s solutions support sales, servicing, and origination features – from inside the branch office, to the call centers and remote workforce. Marlin & Associates (“M&A”) has had an ongoing dialogue with Zenmonics’ management team and founder for many years. After receiving serious unsolicited interest from a private equity-backed industry participant, management and the founder asked M&A to help the firm evaluate their strategic and financing alternatives.
M&A used its deep domain expertise in advising on financial technology transactions to help the company quickly develop materials that clearly communicated the strength of the company’s product offerings, its strong competitive positioning, and its impressive client base. At the same time, M&A helped the company develop a detailed financial plan that clearly validated its growth expectations.
M&A then leveraged its extensive contacts to help the company reach out to a small number of additional high-potential partners that had expressed initial interest. Over the course of the next few weeks, several parties expressed interest in taking control positions in the company. However after extensive review and discussion, management and the founder concluded that their preferred option was to accept the offer of minority investment by FIS, the world's largest global provider dedicated to financial technology solutions. FIS, a longstanding partner of Zenmonics offered to provide Zenmonics with capital and expertise to help the company grow faster and achieve its strategic goals. At the same time FIS offered to provide some liquidity to the founder. M&A then helped the company to negotiate details of the transaction, manage the due diligence review process, and shepherd the transaction to completion.
M&A acted as the exclusive strategic and financial advisor to Zenmonics on its strategic investment by FIS, working closely with Zenmonics’ management team to craft materials on a tight timeline, identify potential investors, initiate conversations, and negotiate alternative offers. M&A led the team through complex negotiations and successfully navigated the competing desires of investors and existing stakeholders.