Castanea Partners and Weston Presidio have completed their previously announced sale of Integrity Interactive Corporation to SAI Global Limited (ASX: SAI). Integrity helps companies, including many global Fortune 100 companies, build compliance and ethics programs, employee communications tools and third party risk management solutions. Castanea and Weston Presidio initially invested in Integrity in early 2006.
“Castanea and Weston Presidio have been terrific partners for us,” said Carl Nelson, co-founder and executive chairman of Integrity. “Their knowledge of and experience in the information services industry were incredibly valuable at an important point in our growth and development. They helped us focus on the key drivers of our business, build out the management team to execute our strategy and enhance the profitability of our company.”
Since its founding in 1999, Integrity has provided leading online ethics and compliance training to multinational companies. Integrity helps companies develop, design and implement best practice ethics and compliance programs that improve employee performance, protect brand image and reduce legal risk. The backbone of the Company’s approach is its thought leadership, which combines ongoing research in the current ethics and compliance landscape with benchmarking, analytics and a legal expertise that drives ethical business conduct. Integrity has developed programs in over 120 different countries, on six continents, and in over 45 languages.
“We are very proud to have played a role in Integrity’s success as it expanded its offering and evolved into a valued partner to some of the strongest and most recognizable brand-name companies in the world,” said John Berg, a partner of Weston Presidio who served on Integrity’s Board of Directors. “We are pleased that SAI recognized Integrity’s deep product line, strong advisory services capabilities and unique insight into understanding the challenges of managing third party risk in today’s highly complex and dynamic environment.”
“The Integrity team has done a tremendous job of expanding its content and corporate solutions and strengthening its thought leadership in the ethics and compliance marketplace to provide a high level of service to its global clients,” said Brian Knez, co-managing partner of Castanea Partners. “We believe Integrity will continue to innovate and grow as part of SAI and we wish Carl, Tom Anderson, the CEO, and their team success well into the future.”
Throughout their ownership of Integrity, the Castanea and Weston Presidio teams provided strategic advice in building out the Company’s sales force, expanding its product offering into areas such as third party risk and identifying potential acquisition targets. In September 2008, Integrity acquired Software Impressions, a privately-held software company offering compliance case management tools for monitoring compliance risks and mitigation programs.
About Weston Presidio
Weston Presidio is a leading private equity firm focused on growth capital investments across a range of sectors including business services, manufacturing and industrial, and consumer and retail. Since its founding in 1991, it has managed five investment funds aggregating over $3.3 billion. The Weston Presidio team has helped identify, build and maximize value in over 300 leading growth companies. For more information, please visit www.westonpresidio.com.
About Castanea
Castanea is a private equity firm that works in partnership with founders and management teams of innovative passion brands to grow their businesses through a combination of capital investment and operating expertise. We are focused on select consumer verticals including beauty, food and beverage, multi-unit services, and enthusiast lifestyle. We typically invest between $15 to $150 million of equity in minority or majority transactions. Our team of talented operating executives offers critical expertise in key verticals and functional areas, and provides our partner companies with strategic and tactical support. Castanea has more than $1 billion in assets under management and is currently investing from a $735 million fourth fund. For more information about Castanea Partners read our story.