BUSINESS software group Sage made its first move into the Nordic market yesterday with a multi-million pound deal to buy Norwegian firm Visma.

Newcastle-based Sage said it had agreed to buy the software and accounting firm for £334m, marking its biggest acquisition to date.

Chief executive Paul Walker said Sage would continue to look at other acquisition opportunities in the UK and overseas as part of its aggressive expansion plans.

Its latest deal with Visma, which has 200,000 customers in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland, will see Sage move into new markets and develop services, including online debt collection.

Mr Walker said he had developed a strong relationship with the Visma management team over the past six years and chief executive Oystein Moan had visited Newcastle on a number of occasions.

Mr Moan said: "As a global market leader in providing business management solutions to small and medium-sized companies, Sage will be positive for the future development of Visma. To a large extent, Visma supplements Sage and there is very limited overlap in the two companies' market positions."

This is the third acquisition Sage has announced in the past four months.

In November it said it was buying French rival Adonix for £78.4m and in January, Sage announced the acquisition of US payment processing company Verus Financial Management for £184m.

Mr Walker said: "We still have a significant amount of funding available to support our acquisition programme.

"We continue to see acquisition opportunities in existing and new markets and, as always, we will continue to pursue them."

Visma is the largest business management solutions firm for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the Nordic region.

Last year, it made an operating profit before depreciation and amortisation of £22m, on revenues of £166m.

Mr Walker said: "We see significant potential to build on Visma's leading position in the Scandinavian SME market."

Visma employs 2,300 people, which will take the total number of those employed by Sage to 12,500 worldwide.

In December, Sage reported a 13 per cent rise in pre-tax profit to £205.4m for the year to September 30.

Its customer base had expanded to 4.7 million, while turnover had increased by 14 per cent to £776.6m.