Analysis of Six Data & Analytics M&A Deals - May 14-20, 2024
TL;DR - Legal, Geospatial, Compliance, Financial, Retail and Energy & Commodities Data & Analytics deals this week
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May 20 - Levine Leichtman Capital Partners and ICG announced a strategic partnership with Law Business Research. Under the arrangement, LLCP will return significant capital to its investors while remaining a shareholder alongside ICG.
We mentioned LBR briefly at the end of last week’s post about legal rankings provider Chambers & Partners as a potential candidate for a merger which could add real scale to a combined entity.
The LBR growth story is compelling and this injection of capital will likely pave the way for more acquisitions like 2018’s Globe Business Media Group.
Delighted to see my friend, ex-colleague and Legal Data & Analytics expert Julian Moore at Lincoln International advising ICG on the way in.
May 19 - Cambridge geospatial software provider IQGeo has recommended shareholders to accept a £333 million ($421.7m) offer from KKR.
The artist formerly known as Ubisense has focused on building a Software, Data & Analytics platform for digital infrastructure providers since shedding its services platform. It will be interesting to see how many acquisitions KKR back to turn what is still a small business (£21m of ARR in 2023) into something of the scale one normally associates with KKR.
May 16 - CUBE, a provider of Automated Regulatory Intelligence (ARI) and Regulatory Change Management (RCM), announced its acquisition of the Thomson Reuters Regulatory Intelligence and Oden products and businesses.
This is the third time we’ve mentioned CUBE in 6 weeks!
Fresh off the back of their funding from Hg, this is the second acquisition CUBE has closed in rapid succession, after closing the acquisition of Reg-Room the week before.
Very impressive work from the CUBE Corporate Development team.
We assume there will be more to come soon…
May 15 - Toggle AI, a provider of artificial intelligence solutions for investing used by hedge funds, banks and brokerages, announced they are acquiring Atom Finance, a provider of frontend infrastructure for banks, brokerages, wealth managers and fintechs.
Toggle AI provides an AI tool for querying market data, enabling non-technical users to access financial information. Atom Finance provided data querying and visualisation tools for similar datasets. It’s hard to tell exactly from the outside but something about this deal says that Atom may have been in need of a home…
Perhaps most interesting feature of this acquisition is the fact that
SoftBank and General Catalyst, both prominent players in the venture capital landscape, will join Toggle AI’s cap table.
Greycroft were already investors in Toggle AI.
We’ll keep a closer eye on Toggle AI going forwards.
May 15 - Crisp, the open data retail platform for the consumer goods industry, has announced the acquisition of two separate entities: SetSight and Lumidata. Both companies are based in Minneapolis and work with retail agencies, brokers and consumer goods brands to provide sales and supply chain data to CPGs selling through Target, Best Buy, and other major retail chains.
After raising $50m in funding in February, FMCG-focused Crisp has wasted no time in deploying the capital, adding two more datasets and more customers to its platform. Crisp had also acquired Atlas Technology Group from Advantage Solutions in October last year.
May 14 - S&P Global Commodity Insights, a division of S&P Global, a provider of information, data, analysis, benchmark prices and workflow solutions for the commodities, energy, metals and energy transition markets, announced it had acquired World Hydrogen Leaders, a portfolio of hydrogen-related conferences and events, digital training and market intelligence.
A simple tuck-in acquisition for S&P Global, aligned with their strategy of growing the ESG side of their business.