Houlihan Lokey Advises The Carlyle Group

Houlihan Lokey is pleased to announce that The Carlyle Group (Carlyle) has acquired a majority stake in PR0PH3CY, newly rebranded as NEVERHACK. PR0PH3CY’s previous minority investor, IK Partners, reinvested alongside Carlyle and the management team. This transaction closed on November 30, 2023.

Founded in 2021 and led by its CEO, Arthur Bataille, PR0PH3CY is a leading French cybersecurity pure player. PR0PH3CY’s mission is to help global businesses and governmental agencies tackle their critical security challenges through its one-stop-shop cybersecurity offering.

Headquartered in Paris with nine offices across France, Belgium, Germany, and Canada, PR0PH3CY is made up of more than 600 employees. PR0PH3CY has been continuously building out its one-stop-shop offer (consisting of cyber strategy, risk and identity management, audit, and configuration of security software and hardware (Net/DevSecOps), training, and upskilling services, and AI tools).

The firm boasts a technology-agnostic partnership positioning with a variety of global security software leaders. PR0PH3CY is a trusted partner of prominent industry players and other leading institutions in the sectors of aerospace and defense, financial services, consumer goods, etc.

Houlihan Lokey was mandated for its strong track record and expertise in the cybersecurity and IT services space. The firm served as the exclusive financial advisor to Carlyle and assisted it throughout the transaction.

This deal highlights Houlihan Lokey’s strong sector expertise in cybersecurity. Other transactions include the sale of Armorblox to Cisco; the sale of Xalient to Volpi Capital; the sale of Rohde & Schwarz Cybersecurity to Total Specific Solutions; the sale of Bridewell Consulting to GCP; as well as the acquisition of WhiteHat Security by NTTSecurity; among others.

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