Norvestor takes majority stake in Zalaris

Norvestor agreed on 13 March 2026 to acquire Zalaris through a recommended voluntary cash tender offer at 100 kroner per share, made through Kona BidCo, a vehicle owned by its ninth fund. The price represented a premium of 40.1% to the closing price of 12 March and valued the equity at around 2.2 billion kroner, giving an enterprise value of NOK 1–10bn and an EV/EBITDA multiple of 5x–12x. Founder and chief executive Hans-Petter Mellerud and five other managers rolled over part of their holdings into the acquisition vehicle, and shareholders representing 17.1% of the capital pre-committed to the offer. Norvestor secured around 88% of the shares, then launched a mandatory offer at the same price for the remainder, running from 16 June to 14 July 2026, ahead of a delisting from Euronext Oslo Børs. Founded in 2000 and listed since 2014, Zalaris runs payroll and HR administration on behalf of large organisations. Its PeopleHub platform is sold as software, and around it the company takes over the work itself: calculating salaries, applying each country’s tax and social security rules, filing the returns those rules require and handling the HR administration that goes with them. A second business advises enterprises and public bodies on moving their HR and payroll systems to the cloud, where it is an SAP Gold Partner. It generated revenue of NOK 1.5bn and an EBITDA of NOK 250–500M in 2025, with an adjusted EBIT margin of around 13%. It employed some 1,200 people, operated from 18 countries with in-house knowledge of local law, and delivered services in more than 150 through partners. It pays over 400,000 employees a month directly and manages applications for more than 1,500,000. That local legal expertise is the barrier in multi-country payroll: an employer operating across twenty jurisdictions must comply with twenty sets of rules, each changing yearly, and few providers hold that knowledge across a wide enough footprint. The board, which had launched a strategic review two years earlier, recommended the offer unanimously after a fairness opinion from ABG Sundal Collier. Arctic Securities and BAHR advised Norvestor, while ABG Sundal Collier and Thommessen advised Zalaris.