$1.5bn EV Legal Data & Analytics provider created from merger of LBR and ALM - Asymmetrix Newsletter #60
More analysis, less listing
Spring is in the air in the northern hemisphere, and it feels like a good time to make some tweaks to the newsletter.
As Asymmetrix’s coverage of the Data & Analytics sector has grown, so has the volume of corporate events we share in this newsletter. In recent months it has grown far too long.
So we’re going to slim down the number of corporate events we list each week in this newsletter, hand-picking only a select number but providing more analysis on those we do include.
Rest assured that in the background we are still tracking the space in granular detail as we build out our own subscription product. If you would like to know more about this, and have access to our complete data set, contact us directly at a.boden@asymmetrix.info.
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Acquisition and Investment activity - March 24-30, 2025
Last week was a relatively quiet week (just 5 acquisitions, 5 investments, 1 bankruptcy, 1 debt financing and 3 items of new deal chatter tracked).
If you would like to know more about our subscription product, and have access to our data, contact us directly at a.boden@asymmetrix.info.
LBR and ALM announce merger
The combination of Legal Data & Analytics providers Law Business Research (LBR) and ALM has felt like an inevitability for some time now, so last week’s announcement did not come as a surprise.
ALM is a venerable player in Legal Information, and has changed hands many times. EagleTree (formerly Wasserstein), who are selling the business to Intermediate Capital Group- and Levine Leichtman-owned LBR, have actually owned the business twice. Between their two stints was an ill-fated $630m acquisition of the business by (now much reduced) Incisive Media. Wasserstein bought the business back for a rumoured $417m in 2014.
Deal terms for the current transaction were not disclosed. ALM lists 1,400+ associated members on LinkedIn, but EagleTree are retaining ALM’s Business and Finance division, so the exact size of the business LBR has acquired is hard to pin down.
LBR itself changed hands only recently - LLCP sold their majority position to ICG in May last year (but retained a stake in the business). That deal was rumoured to value LBR at £660m.
Financial terms in this transaction were not disclosed, but it would be fair to assume that the combined entity is worth around $1.5bn.
What happens next?
Both companies have been mopping up other legal assets for years. We should expect more tuck-in acquisitions going forwards as the business continues to seek scale. And, most likely, if the LBR/Globe and LBR/ALM combinations are any indication, further “move the needle” large deals will be probable too, once the most recent combination has been digested. Chambers and Karnov present interesting potential combinations.
Given the disruption in Legal Data & Analytics coming from Artificial Intelligence, we can also surely expect to see the launch of AI-driven products, built on the company’s large proprietary dataset. Next Chief Strategy Officer, Joel Black, who joined only last month from Thomson Reuters, knows the playbook.
Most immediately though, we await the name of the combined business!
Congratulations to all the bankers who worked on the transaction:
Stuart Sparkes and George Watson at Raymond James, who acted for EagleTree;
Laura Maddison at Arma Partners, who acted for LBR, ICG and LLCP;
Julian Moore at Lincoln International, who acted for LBR, ICG and LLCP.
ISN mulls $6bn sale
ISN is an interesting example of a software platform positively swimming in data.
Over 850 companies, including some extremely large businesses, use ISN to manage their contractor and supplier compliance. All of this data is gathered up inside the ISN platform.
Blackstone Growth became the first outside capital in ISN when they invested at a $2bn valuation in December 2020.
Now the valuation has swelled to roughly treble that amount (including debt), and, according to Bloomberg, the investors would like to cash in their chips.
At this scale, the likelihood is that the acquirer will be another private equity firm (see last week’s acquisition of Dun & Bradstreet by Clearlake). Competition for high-quality assets in the EHSS space is fierce.
It’s also possible that a PE owner of a competitor, like EQT, who invested in Avetta last year, or Apax, who own Alcumus/Veriforce, might consider putting the two businesses together.
9fin acquires Bond Radar
Flush with cash from their $50m December Series B round (covered by Asymmetrix here), $500m EV debt capital markets Data & Analytics provider 9fin is acquiring longer-established Bond Radar for an undisclosed sum.
The rationale here is for 9fin to acquire Bond Radar's “historical data and broad market reach, particularly within investment grade debt and emerging markets.”
With the acquisition of Bond Radar, 9fin will accelerate its expansion into new markets, including investment grade debt and asset-based finance, and expand its geographic reach into key emerging markets like Asia and Latin America. The deal also adds 20 years of historical data to the 9fin platform, providing best-in-class reporting and analytics.
Asymmetrix is eating humble pie this morning. Our view back in December, based on the fact that 9fin had made zero prior acquisitions, was that 9fin would continue to build out its own datasets rather than acquire them.
One can only assume that 9fin saw an opportunity to expand their dataset and fill holes for a reasonable price, rather than try to recreate the data themselves. Certainly, historical data can be hard to replicate as time passes and access to the original sources becomes harder.
Is this deal a one-off, or will it mark the start of an acquisition spree? We will watch with interest.
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