Apax Partners

Cementing its position as the leading non-bank provider of foreign exchange services

Travelex is the world’s largest non-bank foreign exchange specialist and is a global brand. The Travelex Group has offices in 35 countries and corporate relationships in 110 countries, and serves over 29 million customers each year.

In 2005, following a review of its strategic options, the business was put up for sale in a very competitive auction process involving a number of other private equity firms. Apax Partners stood out as being the best strategic partners for the business in the long term. The decision of former majority shareholder Lloyd Dorfman to retain a stake in the business represented a statement of faith in the future of the business under Apax Partners.

Soon after the Apax Funds (AEV and AEVI) became majority shareholders, Travelex signed an exclusive deal with Western Union, offering money transfer services to its existing customer base through Travelex branches.

Apax Partners also appointed a new management team including John Martin, CFO who joined from Hays where he was also CFO, David Sear, Division Head Outsourcing from Voca, where he was Commercial Director, and Peter Burridge, Division Head Commercial Payments, who joined from Siebel where he was an executive committee member responsible for the Asia Pacific region. Ian Meakins was appointed as CEO in January 2007, formerly of Alliance Unichem.

“They brought in a new management team and have been consistent on issues important to the business in terms of performance and strategy. They have been helpful in helping us diagnose and analyse the business in order to understand the key profit levers.” Ian Meakins, CEO

The appointments were in alignment with Travelex’s focus on its three core businesses, Commercial Foreign Exchange, Outsourcing and Retail Foreign Exchange. The commercial payments business was significantly expanded with the acquisition of Ruesch International, a business-to- business payments provider, in March 2007.

“Overall, the impact of the acquisition will be very positive... the way Apax worked with management in doing the deal was genuinely first-class and it felt like a joint team. They dedicated resources to the deal which we didn’t have internally for an acquisition of this scale. These resources were highly valued and fitted very well within our team.

The decision making process within Apax was very fast and responsive making it easy to get the deal done. We could not have completed the deal with such speed without the help of Apax.” Ian Meakins, CEO

The combined business expands Travelex’s corporate customer base, with 35,000 small and medium-sized businesses being served, as well as multi-national financial institutions and global consumer and industrial firms. Travelex’s existing customers will also enjoy an enhanced range of products.

Travelex has cemented its position as the leading non-bank provider of foreign exchange services. Through the help of Apax Partners industry network and its experienced resources, the business has developed its position in its core markets and expanded internationally. The expected IPO of the business should generate much interest.

“...in the last two years there has been a compound growth in EBITDA of nearly 20%. Clearly there has been quite a dramatic shift in the performance of the business. This is very much attributable to the efforts of the Travelex team in combination with Apax”. Ian Meakins, CEO