Deal profile | Gadens advises Civica on acquisition of tree management solutions ArborSafe

Gadens has advised Civica Pty Limited on its acquisition of ArborSafe, a leading tree asset management software solutions.

Civica Group is a global leader in cloud based software for the public sector and regulated markets, that assists organisations around the world to put their ideas into action. The Civica Group supplies cloud solutions to more than 4,000 major customers in 10 countries around the world. Civica Group’s APAC division, headquartered in Sydney, has approximately 1,300 employees with approximately 900 based in Australia and New Zealand.

Civica’s investment and expansion strategy for Australia is to make value-creating acquisitions that add market reach, capabilities and scale to the existing Australian operations.

With over a million trees assessed in Australia, ArborSafe’s tree consultancy and management solutions ArborPlan and ArborSite were developed and refined over 15 years through experienced technologists, arborists and industry specialists. The addition of AborSafe’s tree management solutions builds on Civica’s support for accelerating digitisation and extends Civica’s comprehensive range of software for effective governance, risk and compliance.

The team at Gadens worked closely with the management team throughout the transaction. Gadens’ corporate and technology teams were supported by other specialist teams within the firm.

“It was great to work yet again with the talented Civica deal team on adding another high quality business of such strategic importance to their growing local portfolio”, commented James Beckley, Gadens’ partner who led the team.

Rob Hutcheson, Corporate Development Director (APAC), said of the acquisition: “The Gadens team have played an important role in supporting Civica’s acquisition process in Australia in recent times, and we valued their support again on the acquisition of ArborSafe.”

Practice groups: Corporate/Intellectual Property and Technology

Deal significance: Completion of this deal continues a busy period of transactional work for the Gadens’ corporate team in private M&A. The team recently advised on Viva Leisure’s acquisition of Australian Fitness Management, Select Harvest’s acquisition of United Almonds Limited and the take-private sale of Citadel to PEP.

Key team members: Gadens partner James Beckley led the transaction with Matt Watt (Senior Associate). Donna Bartlett (Partner) led the intellectual property and technology team with Zein Jomaa (Lawyer).