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SOUTHPORT, Connecticut, April 27, 2011 - Carter Morse & Mathias ("CMM") is pleased to announce the merger of its client, Butler Hill Group LLC, a leading language technology and services firm based in Ridgefield, Connecticut, with Appen, Inc., a linguistic technology business based in Sydney, Australia. The merger of the two companies creates a new global leader in linguistic solutions. Carter Morse & Mathias was Butler Hill Group's exclusive financial advisor for the transaction.
Bill Pulver, Appen's Chief Executive Officer, will be CEO of Appen Butler Hill Inc., the new combined company. Lisa Braden-Harder, Butler Hill's President and Founder, will be President of Appen Butler Hill North America.
Appen is the world's leading provider of high-end speech, text and language technology services and holds the world's largest commercially available database of lexicons. Butler Hill Group is a language technology consulting and services firm that helps clients develop technology offerings for international markets. Butler Hill's services include search, speech recognition, and text analytics.
Mr. Pulver commented "The merged entity combines Appen's skills in speech technology with Butler Hill's search and text analytic capabilities. The company will have a worldwide pool of linguistic professionals in over 30 countries, fluent in over 120 languages and language variants."
A major Appen shareholder is Anacacia Capital, an Australia-based private equity firm. Anacacia's Founder and Managing Partner, Jeremy Samuel, commented that "Butler Hill is a very complementary to Appen's business and will expand the company's global reach, enabling Appen to build its US presence and Butler Hill to expand its international capabilities. Both companies were growing rapidly and this transaction better enables that growth to continue.''
This was confirmed by Ms. Braden-Harder, President of Appen Butler Hill's US operations, noting that "This is a great development for Appen and Butler Hill. We see significant business growth opportunities coming from the merger that should benefit employees, clients and shareholders. It is a very exciting prospect to be able to provide even more optimized solutions to our clients."
Michael Carter, Managing Director of CMM, explained, "This transaction is another example of our expanding international middle market capabilities and our ability to close highly structured international transactions. As a founding member of the Alliance for International Corporate Advisors, CMM is increasingly active in cross-border transactions between our U.S. middle market clients and strategic partners and sources of capital around the world. In the course of the transaction, CMM had access to an excellent group of local advisors and due diligence team thanks to our AICA Australian affiliate, AFG Venture Group."
