SunBridge exits Marketo's Japan JV to Adobe

Adobe agreed to acquire Marketo for $4.7 billion in September. Financial details regarding Marketo Japan have not been disclosed.

“We have been fortunate to have SunBridge Partners as a key strategic ally and investor in Japan; their local networks, insights on what makes Japan unique, and understanding on how to best serve customers have been invaluable,” Mark Miller, Marketo’s CFO, said in a statement.

Founded in the US in 2006, Marketo supplies cloud-based marketing automation software that aims to be a comprehensive customer engagement service. In addition to Japan, it has realized expansions into Australia, Israel, and across Europe. Under SunBridge, the Japan JV launched a local-language service and recruited Yasutaka Fukada, a former vice president at Salesforce, as president.

SunBridge invested in Marketo Japan as part of a deal with local advertising giant Dentsu in 2014 shortly after Marketo listed on NASDAQ. The company was taken private in 2016 by Vista Equity Partners in a deal worth about $1.8 billion. Vista was said to have generated $3 billion from its sale of the company to Adobe last year, making it the private equity firm’s largest turnaround to date.

SunBridge was established in 2004 by Allen Miner, the founder of Oracle Corporation’s Japan division. The firm invests in early-stage IT companies with an emphasis on software-as-a-service and cross-border connections between the US and Asia. It helped set up Salesforce’s Japan unit in 2000 and exited the subsidiary to the parent company in 2010 for $170 million.

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• Topics
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• Trade sale
• Japan
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