Broad Horizon enters Danish market with acquisition of Delegate

Danish IT consultancy Delegate has been acquired by Broad Horizon, a Netherlands-headquartered IT services group.

The move kicks off Broad Horizon’s entry in the Scandinavian market, which it has been eyeing for a while, said CEO Johan Taams. “For some time now we have included the Scandinavian region and especially Denmark on the list of international countries where we would like to establish ourselves.” 

When Delegate came into the picture of the Dutch company, Broad Horizon’s management team was impressed. “Delegate is clearly the most competent and well-run company we have looked at in the Nordic region,” said Rudolf Meijer, founder of Broad Horizon.

So what makes Delegate so special? Founded in 2006, the firm has grown to 125 employees working from offices in Copenhagen, Aarhus and Aalborg who advise Danish organisations on digital transformation and deliver business-critical IT solutions based on Microsoft's platform. Its roster of clients includes several of Denmark's larger companies in = different industries as well as several public institutions. 

It is however its “very special employee culture” which makes Delegate stand out, said Taams and Meijer. “They have demonstrated a strong ability to recruit, develop and retain their employees in a highly competitive market. This strong employee focus fosters a culture characterised by a high degree of trust and appreciation to one another.” Illustrating their claims, Delegate has been named a Great Place to Work on multiple occasions. 

Broad Horizon has acquired Delegate from the firm’s management, employees and Blue Equity, a private equity group which had a stake in the firm. 

Jakob Schou, CEO of Delegate, said: “Like Delegate, Broad Horizon is characterised by an entrepreneurial and very ambitious mindset, which means that the two companies complement each other extremely well. Thomas Bonde, a partner at Blue Equity, added: “It has been an exquisite pleasure to work with Delegate's management and competent staff.” 

Alongside providing it a presence in Denmark and the region, the bolt-on complements the firm’s services in Microsoft products (Microsoft 365, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Azure), data, artificial intelligence, business applications and managed services. 

The deal, advised on by M&A consultants from among others KPMG (deal team: Niek Kolkman, Matthijs Polstra, Sakshi Arora, Stefan Klink) follows several acquisitions for Broad Horizon in its home market The Netherlands. In the past 18 months, the group acquired Data Management Professionals, Underlined and data science consultancy Cmotions.