About a-team Marketing Services
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry

A-Team Insight Blogs

Can EQT Partners Repeat $3 Billion BvD Flip with Rimes Investment?

Subscribe to our newsletter

Swedish private equity firm EQT Partners has emerged as the mystery suitor behind talk that managed data management specialist Rimes Technologies was up for sale. EQT is best known in the data management space as the investor that in 2014 acquired entity data specialist Bureau van Dijk (BvD) and flipped it three years later to Moody’s Analytics in a transaction valuing the company at a cool $3 billion.

Terms weren’t disclosed, but the firm says it has made a “significant growth investment” to work with Rimes CEO, president and co-founder Christian Fauvelais to expand its RegTech and data management solutions and extend its existing partnerships and capabilities.

EQT says it also hopes to build out new product lines within fast-growing segments such as the sustainability/ESG space, which has seen a surge of recent activity with new solutions emerging from the likes of ICE, Refinitiv, and Style Analytics.

Rimes was set up in New York in 1996 initially to provide managed data services with a focus on index and benchmark data. More recently, it has launched solutions under the RegTech banner to buy-side asset managers, servicers and owners, and now has over 300 institutional clients in 80 financial centres across 40 countries, and a workforce of over 200 employees. With the EU Benchmark Regulation coming into force, Libor being replaced, and customers requiring ever greater transparency, its core business clearly appealed to EQT.

Until this latest funding, Rimes has been partially owned by Boston-based ABRY Partners, which acquired a minority stake back in 2017. It isn’t clear what ABRY Partners’ involvement will be going forward. Rimes declined to comment when contacted by Data Management Insight, as did EQT.

CEO Fauvelais does say, however, that EQT’s involvement will “allow us to increase the pace at which we can invest in new technology and infrastructure to bring new solutions to the market, including in areas such as ESG and ETF data.” Rimes is already a significant provider of ESG and sustainability data for the investment management industry, as part of a 2018 distribution agreement with ESG research and ratings provider Sustainalytics.

EQT was attracted by Rimes’ recently launched services in ESG and ETF data, and further enhancement of Rimes’ data management and RegTech offerings, according to Robert Maclean, managing director at EQT Partners and investment advisor to the firm’s EQT Mid Market segment.

With over €62 billion in raised capital and €41 billion in assets under management across 19 active funds, EQT has a track record of acquisitions within the data management space. In the three years after its 2014 acquisition of BvD, it added numerous new sales offices, built a new functional management layer, implemented a best-practice global sales and marketing approach, invested in new product development, and added close to 100 million companies to its flagship Orbis database, before selling the firm to Moody’s Analytics in 2017 for $3 billion. Whether it can repeat this performance with Rimes remains to be seen.

Subscribe to our newsletter

Related content

WEBINAR

Upcoming Webinar: Best practices for buy-side data management across structured and unstructured data

Date: 14 November 2024 Time: 10:00am ET / 3:00pm London / 4:00pm CET Duration: 50 minutes Data management is central to asset management, but it can also be a challenge as firms face increased volumes of data, data complexity and the need to consolidate structured and unstructured data to gain valuable insights, improve decision-making, step...

BLOG

A-Team Group Announces Winners of TradingTech Insight Awards USA 2024

A-Team Group has announced the winners of its TradingTech Insight Awards USA 2024. These awards recognise excellence in trading solutions, services and consultancy for capital markets, and focus on vendors providing exceptional trading infrastructure, trading technology, and data solutions. The awards were presented during a celebratory drinks reception after the close of A-Team Group’s TradingTech...

EVENT

ESG Data & Tech Summit London

The ESG Data & Tech Summit will explore challenges around assembling and evaluating ESG data for reporting and the impact of regulatory measures and industry collaboration on transparency and standardisation efforts. Expert speakers will address how the evolving market infrastructure is developing and the role of new technologies and alternative data in improving insight and filling data gaps.

GUIDE

Regulatory Data Handbook 2024 – Twelfth Edition

Welcome to the twelfth edition of A-Team Group’s Regulatory Data Handbook, a unique and useful guide to capital markets regulation, regulatory change and the data and data management requirements of compliance. The handbook covers regulation in Europe, the UK, US and Asia-Pacific. This edition of the handbook includes a detailed review of acts, plans and...