Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Accel-KKR buys into Endurance International

By Mass High Tech Staff

Private equity firm Accel-KKR has acquired a majority equity stake in The Endurance International Group Inc., a Burlington-based  provider of online applications and services.

Under the terms of the transaction, Endurance CEO Steve Sydness, executive vice presidents Hari Ravichandran and Thomas Gorny and the rest of the senior management team will continue in their current roles. Endurance’s senior management team will continue to hold an equity stake in the company, officials said.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Before joining Endurance International in 1999, Sydness was executive vice president of worldwide sales and marketing for North Dakota-based Great Plains Software Inc., which was acquired by Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) in 2000.

Endurance International, founded in 1997, operates offices in Burlington and Phoenix. The company develops website hosting and online applications and services for brands serving more than 600,000 subscription accounts. It also ranks among the top 10 for domain names under management worldwide, managing more than 1 million domain names, officials said.

Accel-KKR, which operates offices in California and Georgia, is a technology-focused private equity firm with more than $1 billion in assets under management. The firm invests primarily in technology-enabled businesses.

Accel-KKR also targets buyouts and recapitalizations of family-owned or closely-held private companies, divisional buyouts of larger companies and going-private transactions.