Crucial to the investment
Afterthefirstcontacts,the9/11attackshappened,whichturned
the whole travel industry on its head. In the period that followed,
numeroustalkswithfinancialbuyerswereheld,butwithoutsuccess.
`They were not so keen to continue with a director-owner. They
makeyoufinanciallyindependent,butstillyouarecrucialtotheir
investment. Many bidders dropped out because of this, but it
didn't make much sense to me. I was already independent.'
Finally, early in 2003, a deal seemed to be on the table with
a British travel organisation. Days before closure they suddenly
walked away and the deal collapsed. `By then it had become
obvious that the invasion of Iraq was inevitable, and the British
decided to suspend all mergers and acquisitions', recalls Romeijn.
We were the first to offer a complete travel package in
real time on the internet
Unconditional support
So after two years he was back to where he had started. `All
these takeover talks really unsettle you, therefore we decided to
donothingatallforawhile.Ididfindthatashadeawkwardin
view of Holland Corporate Finance's involvement. After all, their
world is all about success fees. But in no way did they ever
demonstrate they had any kind of problem with this, despite having
invested quite a lot in this deal. There was never any pressure on
me to go along with any particular buyer.
'Early in 2005, AlpInvest once again approached Romeijn. He
was not averse to meeting them, but only under certain condi-
tions. `Private equity buyers are inclined to fashion very exotic
constructions, with enormous earn-outs. You are left with the
feeling that you have to work off your own takeover price. I had
no interest in paying for this out of my own pocket.' However,
even with these conditions set out, both parties managed to
come to an agreement quite quickly on this occasion. A verbal
agreement had been reached within two months, which was for-
malised four months later in July 2005 with a signing.
Romeijn has since adopted the buy-and-build strategy, with
Sunweb's turnover virtually doubling to around 250 million euros.
He no longer has the desire to work within a corporate environment.
`No, we're now building that part ourselves. But I could never
have done this on my own.'
Epilogue:
Year end 2011, Joost Romeijn bought back the shares in the
company, which in the mean time had transformed into the Sun-
dio Group with operations in the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain,
Germany, Denmark, the United Kingdom and Poland. The Sun-
dio Group nowadays encompasses brands like Sunweb, Jiba,
GoGo, Sudtours, Eliza was here, Husk and X-Travel and is
generating some EUR 400 million in turnover, with more than
800,000 travellers (pax).
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