Houlihan Lokey Advises Five Arrows Principal Investments

Houlihan Lokey is pleased to announce the sale of Pirum Systems to Bowmark Capital for an undisclosed consideration. 

Founded in 2000, Pirum provides a secure, centralised automation and connectivity hub for global securities finance transactions, enabling complete automation of the post-trade and collateral lifecycle. The company delivers its services over a fully hosted, multi-tenanted SaaS platform to over 120 market participants, processing over $2 trillion of trades and collateral daily. Pirum's services provide greater efficiency, reduced operational risk, and improved profitability.

Pirum has delivered annual revenue growth of 20% over the past three years, and its services were recently recognised in the Global Investor/ISF 2018 industry awards, in which it won seven out of the eight categories in Post-Trade Technology Services and all eight categories in Software Solutions. Most recently, Pirum has developed a new reporting and compliance solution, in partnership with IHS Markit, to address the upcoming Securities Financing Transaction Regulation.

Five Arrows Principal Investments (FAPI) is the corporate private equity arm of Rothschild & Co's Merchant Banking business which manages over €11 billion of capital globally. FAPI specialises in investing in companies across Europe with strong market positions and management teams who care deeply about the companies they run; business models with high revenue and earnings visibility; and multiple operational levers that can be used to unlock latent value. FAPI's sector focus is limited to healthcare and education, data and software, and technology-enabled business services.

Bowmark Capital is a leading private equity investment firm specialising in U.K. mid-market companies. Founded in 1997, Bowmark manages and advises funds totaling approximately £1.5 billion on behalf of a blue-chip investor base including public pension funds, insurance companies, and financial institutions from the U.K., U.S., and Continental Europe. The Bowmark team has extensive experience of investing in growth companies, and has supported businesses in a range of industries including business services, financial services, media, technology, consumer and leisure, education and training, and healthcare. Bowmark's philosophy is to be a creative and supportive investor, backing experienced management teams to build world class businesses.

Houlihan Lokey served as the exclusive financial advisor to Pirum. Houlihan Lokey knows Pirum well, having advised FAPI on their 2015 investment. This transaction highlights Houlihan Lokey's long-standing reputation and credentials as a premier advisor within the financial technology sector, following recent transactions including the sale of Compuscan to Experian, TotallyMoney to SEP and Elliot, Asset Control to Sovereign Capital, Robidus to Aegon, Lombard Risk to Vermeg Group*, Message Automation to Broadridge*, 4Sight Financial Software to Broadridge*, and Dynamo to Francisco Partners*, alongside advising Factset on their acquisition of BISAM*.

* These transactions were closed at Quayle Munro prior to its acquisition by Houlihan Lokey to establish the Data & Analytics Group.