IRIS CFO Neal Roberts has been confirmed as CEO of IRIS Software Group, the part of the business management software group that serves professional services firms outside of accountancy. IRIS was split into two separate businesses after the exit of long-time CEO, Martin Leuw, in March (see Martin Leuw resigns as CEO at Iris), Roberts' opposite number, Phil Robinson, runs IRIS Accountancy Solutions. We estimate that IRIS Software Group turns over c.£80m p.a., about twice that of IRIS Accountancy Solutions.
Private equity firm, Hellman & Friedman, owns IRIS Group. We assume H&F are hoping that their eventual exit (one business at a time perhaps?) will give them a comfortable return on the £500m IRIS was valued at when they bought the business from Hg Capital in 2007. So, >4x revenue required? Still a ways to go, I would say, based on recent mid-market software transactions such as Access Technology Group and COA Solutions (see Lyceum gets access to Access).