Houlihan Lokey Advises Informa and Inflexion

Houlihan Lokey is pleased to announce that Inflexion has partnered with Informa plc to combine Informa’s FBX business with Novantas, Inc., to form a new financial data intelligence business. The transaction closed 28 May 2021.

FBX is part of Informa’s financial intelligence portfolio within Informa Intelligence and provides quantitative and qualitative competitive intelligence solutions for US retail banks, with particular strength in the mortgage market. Novantas provides quantitative and qualitative competitive intelligence solutions for US retail banks, with particular strength in the deposits market.

Founded in 1999, Inflexion is a middle-market private equity firm investing in high-growth, entrepreneurial businesses with ambitious management teams and working in partnership with them to accelerate growth. With £5.4 billion AUM, Inflexion’s flexible approach allows it to back both majority and minority investments, typically investing £10 million–£300 million of equity in each deal.

In an innovative transaction structure, Inflexion will partner with Informa plc to create a new business that combines the brands and operations of FBX and Novantas, establishing a leading position in the provision of retail banking data, intelligence, and software solutions, with strength across mortgages, consumer lending, consumer deposits, and digital banking. The investment is being made by Inflexion’s dedicated minority investment fund, Partnership Capital II.

Houlihan Lokey served as the exclusive buyside M&A and financing advisor to both Informa plc and Inflexion. This transaction builds on Houlihan Lokey’s market-leading position in the financial information, data and analytics sector as well as in complex, cross-border debt financing transactions. Other Houlihan Lokey transactions in the industry include the sale of Evaluate to Hg Capital*; the acquisition of Corsearch by Astorg; the sale of Bureau van Dijk to Moody’s*; the sale of Compuscan to Experian*; the sale of Fulcrum Financial to Fitch*; the sale of PowerAdvocate to Verisk*; the acquisition of RIMES by EQT; and the acquisition of Itiviti by Broadridge.

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