Gresham has finalised its acquisition of S&P Global’s EDM business as the data automation company expands to meet the growing and increasingly complex data needs of modern financial institutions.
EDM, which supports more than US$12 trillion in assets, will sit alongside Gresham’s existing enterprise data management business, which was created with its merger with Alveo in 2024. London- and New York-based Gresham also provides reconciliation data services, which have historically been the company’s core capability.
The terms of the deal, which was announced in October, have not been made public. The company beat other “familiar name” bidders in a “very competitive” process to acquire EDM and give Gresham the heft to offer the sort of “mission-critical” data management processes at scale that financial institutions are looking for, said chief executive Mark Hepsworth.
“Larger is better – we have some very large customers and increasingly we see customers looking to outsource more through managed services; I think it’s important to have the scale to be able to do that,” Hepsworth told Data Management Insight.
“When we saw the opportunity to acquire EDM, it was really very much staying within that strategic focus, but just increasing our focus on EDM and being larger.”
More Clients
Backed by technology and software-focused private equity firm STG, Gresham is bolstering its data and technology capabilities as financial institutions’ business models evolve to embrace multi-asset strategies that incorporate new technologies, including artificial intelligence. The deal expands Gresham’s client base to more than 400 capital markets firms, said Hepsworth.
S&P Global gained its EDM business with the acquisition of IHS Market Global, which in turn had created it from Cadis, a leading data management outsource firm it had purchased in 2012.
The Gresham deal came in tandem with STG’s purchase of S&P Global’s portfolio management and compliance business thinkFolio.
Marc Bala, managing director at STG said “thinkFolio has built an exceptional reputation for solving some of the most complex portfolio construction and analytics challenges in the market. We are excited to partner with the team to support their long-term vision, with a particular emphasis on customer outcomes, product leadership, and operational excellence”.
The company will continue to be run by chief executive Ajay Sheth.
Complementary Capabilities
Gresham’s Hepsworth said the company was impressed with the solutions that EDM had developed under S&P Global and those would complement its own offerings. Also, the acquisition gives Gresham the firepower to continue innovating in the data management space while being able to “leverage some of those cooler technologies out there”, including cloud and AI.
“It’s very much up to us to create a sort of a next-gen set of solutions, leveraging some of those technologies and provide those as an option to our clients,” he said.
Hepsworth stressed that while EDM will be operated and marketed under the Gresham brand, the acquired business’ clients would continue to engage with the firm under their existing terms and product roadmaps, including their use of S&P Global data. As well, he said there are no plans to combine its two enterprise data businesses or force customers to move from one to another.
With a “a broader range of use case solutions” Gresham is now better placed to take on its biggest competitor – in-house data management development – said Hepsworth.
He said the newly enlarged company would look to cross-sell its offerings into the North American markets, in which Gresham has traditionally been strongest. That will include expansion into the buy-side, for which EDM’s solutions were largely focused.
“Over the years you’ve seen people sometimes have concerns about how long it takes to implement EDM solutions, total cost of ownership around things like EDM solutions, and these are key factors that I think we have the opportunity to address,” he said. “That’s where you’re really going to see us focus on giving those customers a good upgrade path.”
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