M-Brain to acquire Esmerk

Helsinki, Finland – 13th June 2012
M-Brain is Finland’s leading competitive intelligence company specializing in the monitoring and analysis of online and media content. Esmerk was founded in 1975 and offers information and media monitoring services. It is headquartered in Finland and has offices in Sweden, the UK, France, Germany, the United States, Malaysia and Russia.

Following the transaction, M-Brain’s pro forma net sales for 2012 will amount to around EUR 21 million. Its total client base will include some 1,500 clients. The company’s 260 experts in 7 countries gather and analyze information on the visibility of clients and their sectors in online, printed and social media. What makes the transaction significant is that M-Brain is set to become the largest operator in its sector in the Nordic countries, rising among the top six operators in Europe.

“Our client organizations have an increasing need for an international partner capable of offering services outside Finland as well,” says M-Brain’s CEO Tuomo Räsänen. “Esmerk has long-standing expertise and is a house-hold name in the area of business intelligence. The transaction further supports M-Brain’s goal of being a company focused on gathering, analyzing and making sense of the huge amount of business critical online and print media information, and thus add value to our customers in a global operating environment,” Räsänen continues.

“This transaction supports Sanoma’s strategy to concentrate our business and focus on consumer media and learning,” says Sanoma Learning’s CEO Jacques Eijkens. “We believe that M-Brain will provide Esmerk with good opportunities to further develop its operations and high-quality services,” adds Eijkens.

The acquisition of Esmerk will open the door for M-Brain’s existing and new-generation comprehensive competitive intelligence solutions to new markets in Europe and elsewhere in the world. M-Brain’s online and social media expertise in particular and Esmerk’s business intelligence services will offer clients even greater possibilities to draw on information, filtered and re-edited by analysts, for decision-making to steer their business operations.

“In the sector of media-based information and monitoring, consolidation has clearly started,” states M-Brain’s founder Marjukka Nyberg. “Smaller companies operating in the sector no longer meet the needs of growing client companies and organizations that are becoming increasingly international. The global trend in the sector is to offer clients the most efficient competitive intelligence expertise through a hybrid approach, as a combination of human expertise and technologies rolled into one,” explains Nyberg.

Esmerk will continue its operations as an independent company belonging to the M-Brain Group. Esmerk will continue its cooperation with Sanoma Corporation as a service provider.