AXA Private Equity buys into Manreo Paris, Wednesday 24 September 2003

In an operation coordinated by the Fonds de Co-investissement pour les Jeunes Entreprises (FCJE), two of AXA Private Equity’s Venture Capital Funds, AXA Placement Innovation III and AXA Venture Fund IV, have invested € 750,000 in Manreo alongside the Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations and financial shareholders who already owned part of the company’s capital. The total value of the capital increase was € 2 million.

Manreo will use the capital to accelerate its commercial expansion:

• already counting TF1, France Télévisions, the INA and the TDF group among its clients, Manreo will seek to expand its client base, particularly in the post-production market.
• commercial deployment and marketing on corporate markets on the back of contracts already won in the field (Renault, Cité des Sciences, amongst others),
• consolidation of several new partnerships currently under negotiation with software publishers, IT service companies and firms specialised in content management,
• continued study of opportunities in the telecommunications markets after renewing business relations with France Telecom.

AXA Private Equity’s interest in Manreo was motivated by the quality of the group’s management and the market potential of the solutions it has developed. According to Luc Lechelle, Director of AXA Private Equity’s Venture Capital division, Manreo is "an excellent opportunity to invest in a software publisher experiencing rapid commercial expansion and benefiting from high technological barriers to entry in a very promising market undergoing concentration".

AXA Private Equity and the FCJE have joined forces with other financiers that have invested in Manreo since 2001 including C-Source (a seed capital fund dedicated to multimedia technologies and managed by I-Source Gestion), Alven Capital, Lafayette International and Start-Up Performance.

About Manreo

Created in June 1999, Manreo is a French software publisher that offers immediate productivity gains in the Media Asset Management and Rich Media fields. Its offering includes software packages and customised solutions.
Software developed by Manreo is specifically aimed at the management and exploitation of media assets in fields such as digitisation, editing of raw footage, indexing, archiving and browsing.
Based in Paris, Manreo today has a team 18 people with a variety of profiles and professional backgrounds.
Its clients include – among others – the INA, e-TFI, France Télévisions, France Telecom and TDF.
Manreo’s products are available in both French and English.