Bain agrees to buy Australian firm

Bain Capital LLC agreed to buy MYOB Pty Ltd, an Australian business management software maker, for an undisclosed sum to benefit from selling products to faster-growing economies in the Asia-Pacific region. Boston-based Bain will buy a majority stake in MYOB from buyout firms Archer Capital and HarbourVest Partners LLC, the companies said in an e-mailed statement Sunday. Terms of the deal weren't released. MYOB, an acronym for Mind Your Own Business, was acquired by Archer in 2009 and is Australia's largest independent software vendor, according to the statement. On Friday, a person with knowledge of the matter said Sage Group Plc, the UK's biggest software maker, was close to buying MYOB for about A$1.3 billion ($1.4 billion). The Sage bid ran into last- minute trouble, Reuters reported yesterday. "MYOB is a first-class company with an attractive valuation," Walid Sarkis, a managing director at Bain, said in the statement. "It has been the leader in the financial software space for small and medium-sized enterprises in Australasia for a very long time."