Every 19 seconds, a non-English speaking immigrant enters the United States. Soon, one out of five U.S. residents will speak a language other than English at home and these residents are nearly four times more likely to purchase products and services from companies that communicate with them in their native language. Recognizing these trends, in 2004 ABRY acquired Language Line Services, the global leader in over-the-phone interpretation and language services that enables corporations and governmental organizations to access this rapidly growing constituency. Language Line's clients include companies in the healthcare, telecommunications, financial, insurance and other industry sectors in the U.S., U.K. and Canada, as well as government entities.

In working with Language Line we provided liquidity for a financial investor seeking an exit and became a supportive partner to the operating team who wished to continue to expand and operate Language Line. Despite its industry-defining status and the strength of the underlying growth of the industry served, prior to its investment, ABRY identified opportunities to accelerate Language Line’s growth and improve its operating efficiency. Following our investment, Language Line accelerated revenue growth by investing in efficiency-enhancing technology, augmenting its sales organization, expanding and upgrading its senior management team, introducing new value-added and ancillary products, improving the quality of its service offerings, and expanding geographically, including highly-strategic and accretive acquisitions of its largest competitors in the U.S. and U.K.

Initially founded as a volunteer organization in 1982, Language Line has developed industry-leading proprietary technology, a broad array of innovative services and best-in-class service quality. This technology and state-of-the art services enables Language Line to quickly connect its customers to their patients, sales prospects and clients in 175 spoken languages and American Sign Language 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, from any phone in any country. Every day 20,000 customers around the globe rely on the quality, accuracy, and professionalism of Language Line’s 3,000 highly-skilled interpreters, and every year Language Line facilitates 18 million “mission critical” calls and interprets 170 million call minutes.