Thomson Reuters offers to buy Sweden's Pagero for $627 million

(Reuters) - Thomson Reuters said on Thursday it has offered to buy Swedish e-invoicing and tax solutions company Pagero for 6.4 billion crowns (about $627 million), topping an earlier offer from U.S. tax technology firm Vertex.

Thomson Reuters offered to pay 40 crowns in cash for each Pagero share, which is a premium of 11% to the stock's close on Wednesday and higher than Vertex's offer of 36 crowns per share.

Pagero, whose services involve digitizing and automating accounts processes, said an independent bid committee of its board switched its recommendation from Vertex's offer to the Thomson Reuters offer.

Thomson Reuters, which owns the Checkpoint tax and accounting service, said Pagero's e-invoicing compliance capabilities would expand its indirect tax offerings.

Thomson Reuters, which also owns the Westlaw legal database and Reuters news agency, has made multiple deals in the past few years.

In May last year, the company's CFO told Reuters News that it will have a $10 billion M&A budget until 2025. Since then, it has announced two acquisitions.

The first was Britain-based Imagen, a digital content asset management company, for an undisclosed price and the second was California-based Casetext, which helps legal professionals conduct research, analysis and prepare documents using generative AI, for $650 million.

In 2022, Thomson Reuters bought SurePrep LLC, a U.S.-based provider of tax automation software and services, for $500 million in cash.

The acceptance period for the Pagero offer starts on or around Jan. 12 and ends on or around Feb. 9, Thomson Reuters said. ($1 = 10.2084 Swedish crowns)

(Reporting by Jahnavi Nidumolu and Shubham Kalia in Bengaluru; Editing by Sonia Cheema and Savio D'Souza)