Acuris

Acuris began with a single product, Mergermarket, which was established in December 1999 by founders Caspar Hobbs, Charlie Welsh and Gawn Rowan Hamilton. Its founding idea was that in the M&A market, “There is a lot of information out there but very little intelligence.”[3]

In August 2006 the company, then known as Mergermarket Ltd, was acquired by The Financial Times Group for £101m,[4][5] publisher of the Financial Times newspaper and FT.com. FT Group was a division of Pearson PLC, the international media group.

In 2013, the company was renamed to Mergermarket Group. In November 2013, Pearson agreed to sell Mergermarket Group to London private equity investor BC Partners in a transaction valuing the business intelligence and news service at £382m including debt. Based on the deal, Mergermarket Group was valued at 15 times its last year operating income.[6]

On 15 January 2014, Moody's Investors Service assigned a B3 corporate family rating to the Mergermarket Group.[7]

In July 2017, the Mergermarket Group rebranded as Acuris. The announcement of this move fueled speculation that a sale of the company might come in the next year.[8] Indeed, BC Partners sold a minority stake of around 30% to Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC in July 2017.[9]

In May 2019, BC Partners sold a majority stake in Acuris to ION Investment Group, a financial software and data business which owns Fidessa, in an £1.35bn deal.[10][11] BC Partners will retain a 25% stake in the company, while GIC is selling out.

On 30 January 2015, two employees of Acuris filed in the Southern District of New York a complaint against the company with assigned index number 15-cv-00688, alleging various claims (namely, pregnancy discrimination, gender discrimination, sexual harassment, national origin discrimination, race discrimination, and retaliation), specifically against the former CEO Hamilton Matthews and managing director Jonathan Reed[12]. Mainstream papers reported such facts dating back to the time when the company belonged to the Pearson Group through The Financial Times Group[13][14]. On 3 September 2015, the parties signed for a settlement without disclosing any of its terms[15]. However, further employees of the company said to minor websites that the abusive and unprofessional behavior of other editors and directors of Mergermarket also contributed to create a sexist work environment[16][17][18]. In 2020 Hamilton Matthews founded London-based financial firm Flintway[19].

Acuris sells web-based subscription services organised under six divisions[20]:

• Fixed Income (including the following services: Debtwire, Xtract Research, and Creditflux)
• Transactions (including: Mergermarket, Unquote, AVCJ, and Activistmonitor)
• Infrastructure (including: Inframation and SparkSpread)
• Risk & Compliance (including: Acuris Risk Intelligence, Wealthmonitor, Anti-Corruption Report, Hedge Fund Law Report, Capital Profile, Cybersecurity Law Report, Private Equity Law Report, and Blackpeak)
• Equities (including: Dealreporter, PaRR, and TIM)
• Research (including: Acuris Studios and Perfect Information)

• 2007 – Infinata
• 2010 – Xtract Research
• 2012 – Inframation Group[21]
• 2013 - Sale of MergerID
• 2014 – Perfect Information[22]
• 2014 – Law Report Group[23]
• 2015 – AVCJ and Unquote[24]
• 2015 – C6 Group[25]
• 2016 – Creditflux[26]
• 2017 – Sale of Infinata[27]
• 2017 – TIM Group[28]
• 2018 – Spark Spread
• 2019 – Blackpeak