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TA Associates Invests Growth Capital In Two Software Cos



LONDON -(Dow Jones)- TA Associates said Tuesday it has invested growth capital in two separate software companies, taking minority stakes in each.

The Boston-based private equity firm has put some $200 million into Czechoslovakia-based AVG Technologies BC, which makes computer security software, and $60 million into The Employee Owned Company, or TEOCO, which provides cost management applications such as cost auditing, invoice automation, payables processing and claims management to North American and international wireless, wireline, wholesale and cable service providers.

TA Associates investment in AVG's money will be used to fund global expansion and potential add-on deals for the business, as well as doling out cash to shareholders and some money to Enterprise Investors, one of its other backers, which didn't want to exit the company but wanted partial liquidity, according to a person familiar with the firm.

With its investment in TEOCO, TA associates becomes its first outside investor. The growth capital will be used to build TEOCO by making further acquisitions in the global business support system and operations support system market.

"The BSS/OSS (Business Support System/Operations Support System) is large and growing and was valued at over $40 billion in 2008," said Brian J. Conway, a Managing Director at TA Associates who joins the board.

"The market's cost management sector is one of the faster-growing parts of the industry," he added.

-By Marietta Cauchi, Dow Jones Newswires; +44 207 842 9241; marietta.cauchi@ dowjones.com

(Daniel Hausmann in New York contributed to this story.)


  (END) Dow Jones Newswires
  10-06-091026ET
  Copyright (c) 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.

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