the serial acquirer Market Observatory · 2026-Q3

Method, limits and imprint

Where every figure comes from, what this sample does not support, and the legal notices.

What this does not support

Method

Method. Every figure is read from a filed annual account or a company's own published report, and carries its source, the date it was retrieved and the version of the code that parsed it. Nothing in the register is modelled, estimated or filled in, and where a figure could not be established it is absent rather than approximated — 50 of the 77 acquisitions on file are recorded without a usable price for exactly that reason.

One section departs from that, and says so on its face. What their own capital costs is an estimate. Its cost of debt is measured like everything else — the rates come from the buyers’ own contracts — but a cost of capital also needs what equity costs and what the equity is worth, and neither is observable for a company without a share price. Those inputs are assumptions. They are named, printed with the table, and set as constants that anyone can change; the section carries its own page and is marked, so that no figure from it can be mistaken for a measured one. Two buyers are left out of it entirely rather than estimated on inputs that do not hold.

Disclosure. The author has commercial ties to the European vertical software industry. No position is held in, and no compensation has been received from, any company named here. Figures sourced from company filings and third-party market surveys as cited; this is research, not investment advice.

Imprint

PW Business Consulting GmbH
c/o Philippe Willi
Schönaustrasse 19
8707 Uetikon am See
Switzerland
CHE-114.549.793
contact@theserialacquirer.com

Market Observatory · 2026-Q3 · 13 buyers tracked · 77 acquisitions on file · largest single year of capital deployed: Bending Spoons S.p.A., 1’734 EUR m in 2026

Privacy

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Last updated 2026-09-08. If what the page does changes, this text changes with it.

The rest of the register

Guess what serial acquirers paid →What European software serial acquirers actually pay, from filed accounts. Guess the price, then see the source.
What was paid, per unit of revenue →Every disclosed acquisition price in the register, one row per observation, coloured by how well it is evidenced.
How much they deploy →How much capital each European software serial acquirer actually puts to work, and across how many acquisitions.
What they owe, and what it costs →Net debt against revenue, the interest each buyer actually pays, and every credit facility on file with its terms.
What their own capital costs →An estimate of what each buyer pays for capital, set against the 20-30% return they demand of the companies they buy.

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Figures as at 2026-09-08. Every number on this page comes from a filed account or a company’s own published report — how, and what it does not support.