Contact: Brenon Daly
It turns out that the advisers for the largest-ever SaaS acquisition are also the busiest in terms of restocking the ranks of publicly traded subscription-based software companies. J.P. Morgan Securities, which banked SAP, and Morgan Stanley, which advised SuccessFactors, are upper left on the prospectuses of no fewer than five SaaS vendors currently in registration. Between them, the ‘Houses of Morgan’ have a fairly tight grip on the sector, leading the proposed IPOs of on-demand software shops including Eloqua, ExactTarget, Bazaarvoice, Jive Software and Brightcove.
As lead underwriters, the banks stand to pocket tens of millions of dollars in fees from the upcoming offerings. Additionally, they are likely to build on that initial relationship through other advisory services for the companies. For instance, J.P. Morgan co-led Taleo’s IPO in 2005 and, more recently, advised it on its $125m purchase of Learn.com. On an even bigger scale, Morgan Stanley led the IPOs of both RightNow and SuccessFactors and then advised them on their sales, a pair of deals that totaled a whopping $5bn.