Sparring Capital prend aquires a majority stake in POP

Paris, June 2nd 2021: Founded in 2006 by Eric Desgages and Frédéric Stoll, POP is specialised in Lean Management consulting and training, supporting its clients in the sustainable improvement of their operational performance. Based in Nantes, the group has a strong regional presence in Western France, working with large companies and SMEs involved in both industrial and tertiary sectors.

QUALIOPI certified, POP has been building its training offer since 2011, matching the growing demand from its clients for operational improvements of their processes. Through this activity, POP has built a deeply differentiating offer and a virtuous business model, supporting a strategy of cross-selling between training and consulting activities.

In an operational excellence sector that is undergoing consolidation, the group’s aim is to deploy an active external growth strategy, bringing together specialists in lean management, supply chain, design to cost and other areas of expertise dedicated to the operational improvement of their clients.

Within this context, Eric Desgages and Frédéric Stoll will focus on the implementation of this build-up strategy. They will hand over the operational management of POP to a management committee led by Lorette Buys, the new Managing Director.

Frédéric Stoll and Eric Desgages said: “We were looking for an opportunity to develop POP, to take it to another level, with the aim of making an operational transition to our management team while offering development opportunities to our teams. This is exactly what this collaboration with Sparring Capital offers us. Future developments and acquisitions will enable us to build a group with complementary skills but sharing the same culture, namely a constant desire to improve the operational performance of our clients and the training of their employees, while placing the human dimension at the heart of our endeavours”..

Alexandre Beau, Sparring Capital’s Principal, added: : “We were immediately attracted to POP for the quality of its consulting and training services and the sustainability dimension that these services offer. Alongside a highly qualified management team, Sparring’s role will be to support the company in its development projects, notably based on an ambitious external growth strategy. The objective will be to strengthen and extend existing expertise in a market where, beyond the quality of execution of the missions, the scale of the business is becoming an important factor both for clients and the recruitment of talent”..

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Stakeholders:

Sparring Capital :

Arnaud Leclercq, Alexandre Beau, Bastien Labry

Founders:

Eric Desgages, Frédéric Stoll

Management :

Lorette Buys, Ronan Bourdelles, Antoine Courtial

Senior Banks:

CIC Ouest (Bruno Nesti)

Management MA advisor:

N Finance (Guy Cohen, Maxime Dugast)

Investor legal advisors:

HPML

Corporate(Thomas Hermetet, Aurélie Bonsch, Anastasie Leconte)

Tax(Nicolas Privat)

Investor financial due diligence:

Squareness (Frédéric Meunier, Antoine Suderie)

Investor market due diligence:

Neovian(Patrick Richer, Kevin Bailey)

Management and founders legal advisor:

PDGB (Roy Arakelian, Thierry Jestin, Olwen Collon)

Legal advisor to banks:

CMS Francis Lefebvre (Benjamin Guilleminot)

HR advisor:

Selescope (Stéphane Beder)