Global alternative asset manager The Carlyle Group (NASDAQ: CG) and TA Associates, a leading global growth private equity firm, today announced that they have signed a definitive agreement under which Carlyle will sell ITRS to funds managed by TA Associates. Financial terms were not disclosed. The transaction is expected to close in April 2017.
ITRS is an international software vendor to the financial services sector, offering real-time monitoring and analytics software. The company provides solutions to transform masses of business and machine data into actionable insights, supporting better systems and business performance. ITRS serves more than 170 global clients, including 9 out of the top 10 investment banks, as well as exchanges and trading venues, hedge funds, and brokers and vendors. ITRS currently employs 180 people in the United Kingdom, New York, Hong Kong, the Philippines and Spain.
Since making its investment in September 2011 through Carlyle Europe Technology Partners II (CETP II), Carlyle has worked closely with the ITRS management team on a number of strategic initiatives. The company has evolved from its founder-led heritage into an organization with an experienced leadership team operating across multiple geographies and business sectors. Led by Guy Warren, CEO, the management team increased ITRS’s market penetration from its traditional base in capital markets to other financial services markets, including hedge funds, and exchanges and trading platforms.
Guy Warren, ITRS CEO, said, “Carlyle has provided strategic guidance and support for the development of our current revenue models, which are now increasingly sustainable and recurring. They also supported our evolution from offering heritage data monitoring products to our new state-of-the-art data analytics tools. Carlyle guided ITRS into new markets across the financial services sector and helped position us for this next exciting phase of growth and expansion with TA Associates. We welcome TA as an investor and look forward to leveraging the firm’s industry knowledge, experience and global resources.”
Fernando Chueca, Managing Director, Carlyle Europe Technology Partners team, said, “Our investment in ITRS has enabled us to showcase the expertise we offer to high growth technology-led businesses. Guy has nurtured a talented leadership team, which we believe has performed exceptionally well over the past five years. We thank them and all ITRS employees for their commitment to the innovation and excellence that are hallmarks of ITRS today.”
J. Morgan Seigler, a Managing Director at TA Associates, said, “As one of the leading providers of performance monitoring tools to the financial services sector, ITRS is a highly attractive investment for TA Associates. The company has experienced accelerating growth in a market we believe will continue to offer additional new business opportunities. We look forward to supporting Guy and his team as they continue to grow ITRS’s footprint globally, both with ITRS Geneos and their exciting new product, ITRS Insights.”
This is the sixth exit for CETP II, a 2008 vintage fund. William Blair is financial advisor and Travers is legal advisor to ITRS. Goodwin is legal advisor to TA Associates.
About ITRS
Simplifying information into real-time actionable insight – ITRS creates software that transforms the mass of raw data generated by organisations into meaningful information, enabling clients to understand the performance of their critical systems and to influence their businesses intelligently. With over 20 years’ experience in financial markets, ITRS delivers out-of-the-box solutions that can be customised, ensuring prompt time-to-market and return on investment. ITRS is proud to provide solutions that over 170 leading global clients, including investment banks, exchanges and trading venues, hedge funds, brokers and vendors, use every second of every day, giving them the essential capability they need to take intelligent action. ITRS Geneos is a real-time monitoring tool for managing increasingly complex and interconnected IT estates. Built for financial services and trading organisations, it collects a multitude of data relating to the performance of servers, infrastructure, connectivity and applications, analyses it to provide fresh information, and presents it in relevant, intuitive visualisations. ITRS Insights is a streaming big data analytics platform that simplifies the complexity involved in analysing vast amounts of data at speed and it combines big data storage with a real-time computation engine and in-built machine learning algorithms.
About The Carlyle Group
The Carlyle Group (NASDAQ: CG) is a global alternative asset manager with $158 billion of assets under management across 281 investment vehicles as of December 31, 2016. Carlyle’s purpose is to invest wisely and create value on behalf of its investors, many of whom are public pensions. Carlyle invests across four segments – Corporate Private Equity, Real Assets, Global Market Strategies and Investment Solutions – in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, the Middle East, North America and South America. Carlyle has expertise in various industries, including aerospace, defense & government services, consumer & retail, energy, financial services, healthcare, industrial, real estate, technology & business services, telecommunications & media and transportation. The Carlyle Group employs more than 1,600 people in 35 offices across six continents.
About TA Associates
TA Associates is one of the largest and most experienced global growth private equity firms. The firm has invested in more than 480 companies around the world and has raised $24 billion in capital. With offices in Boston, Menlo Park, London, Mumbai and Hong Kong, TA Associates leads buyouts and minority recapitalizations of profitable growth companies in the business services, consumer, financial services, healthcare and technology industries. More information about TA Associates can be found at www.ta.com.
