Riverside Partners' Portfolio Company Welocalize to Invest in Park IP Translations

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Feb 07, 2012, 03:00 ET

BOSTON, Feb. 7, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Riverside Partners, a Boston based private equity firm, announced today that it has come to agreement to make a significant investment in Park IP Translations, the market leader in the highly technical field of patent translation. The investment in Park IP Translations will enhance the company's service offerings, providing clients with better translations on a global scale. Park IP is headquartered in New York, New York.

The investment will be made through Riverside Partners' portfolio company, Welocalize, a global market leader for content translation, localization and internationalization of web based content. Welocalize has over 500 employees in 11 offices located in the USA, Ireland, United Kingdom, Germany, China, and Japan, and provides translation supply chain management to deliver market-ready, translated content efficiently and affordably. Welocalize is headquartered in Frederick, Maryland.

Park IP Translations was founded as the first translation consultancy strategically positioned to serve the intellectual property community. With vast language resources, Park IP Translations is a one stop shop for litigation as well as patent prosecution translation needs, globally.

"By combining with Welocalize, Park will be able to leverage Welocalize's global presence, robust infrastructure, and industry leading technology in our service to our clients," said Josh Rosman, CEO of Park IP Translations. "We will pursue an even greater geographic reach with a continued focus on enhancing our technology solutions to provide our clients with the highest value translation services. Ultimately, a partnership with a market leader like Welocalize, given their platform and scale, will enable Park to take its services to the legal community to the next level."

Smith Yewell, CEO of Welocalize, said, "We are ecstatic to have Josh and his team on board with us at Welocalize. We believe that Park's market leading patent translation offering is a great match for Welocalize and that together, we can build a broader set of service offerings, and most importantly, a more comprehensive set of translation solutions for our clients."

Smith continued, "Moreover, we believe that this investment in Park IP is validation that choosing a partner with the resources and reach of Riverside Partners was the right decision for Welocalize. Riverside Partners has been a strong partner since the original investment date providing capital and valuable strategic guidance and input. The completion of this investment in Park IP is another example of Riverside's commitment to its portfolio."

"Welocalize has continued its strong growth and expansion of service offerings since we first partnered with the management team in 2010. We are very excited about the growth opportunities from the combination of Welocalize and Park IP," said Ian Blasco, General Partner at Riverside Partners. "Josh and Smith both are capable, experienced, and dynamic leaders and together we believe that they can continue to build a world class company. We are thrilled to continue to invest in the Welocalize business and the Welocalize team with the addition of Park."

Moorgate Partners, a New York City based investment banking boutique, acted as exclusive financial advisor to Park IP Translations in connection with the transaction.

About Park IP Translations
Park IP Translations is a language services company that serves the legal intellectual property services community through translation, interpretation, and consultancy services. Park is headquartered in New York City and possesses a network of offices and supplier relationships worldwide. Park's familiarity with foreign countries and practices gives it a dynamic edge when consulting with its clients on the communication styles, languages and dialects relevant to any international jurisdiction or patent portfolio. To learn more about Park IP, please visit www.ParkIP.com.

About Welocalize
Welocalize offers integrated globalization services and products for the fluid and rapid deployment of enterprise content and applications to international markets. Welocalize provides globalization consulting, translation, localization, testing solutions and enterprise translation management tools that are optimized to be able to deliver on-demand translation in over 100 languages. Welocalize's clients include Autodesk, Inc.; Canon; Cisco Systems; Computer Associates; IBM; Microsoft; Sun and Symantec. With over 400 employees worldwide, Welocalize maintains 11 offices in the United States, Germany, Ireland, United Kingdom, Japan and China. For more information, please visit www.welocalize.com.

About Riverside Partners
Founded in 1989, Riverside Partners is a middle market private equity firm currently investing Riverside Partners Fund IV, L.P. The fund focuses on growth oriented companies primarily in the healthcare and technology industries. Riverside Partners is particularly experienced at partnering with founders, owners and management teams and it brings substantial domain expertise and operating experience to its portfolio companies. The partners at Riverside Partners have managed more than $500 million in investments in over 50 companies. The firm is currently focused on companies with revenues between $20 and $200 million and with $5-$25 million of EBITDA. For more information, please visit www.riversidepartners.com

SOURCE Riverside Partners