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Nov 13, 2015

Yet Another FinTech Incubator Emerges

International, Uncategorized 0 Comments

This morning Rakuten announced they established a $100 million fintech fund: http://ow.ly/UD8wl. We’re genuinely excited for the Japanese e-commerce giant, but we’ve heard this story before. We’ve now lost track of how many FinTech incubators are out there. Lots of governments and cities seem to have one (Dublin, London, NYC and Hong Kong being the biggest). Large and small banks — JPM, Santander and Citi to name a few — around the world have made announcements in recent years that they have created their own, with the intent to get closer to the innovators, invest in the future of their own core…

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Oct 28, 2015

ICE Preempts IDC IPO Paying More than 5x Revenue to Acquire Interactive Data

In the News , , 0 Comments

On the morning of October 26, Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. (NYSE: ICE) announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Bedford, Massachusetts-based Interactive Data Holdings Corporation (“IDC”). According to the company, the transaction was valued at an enterprise value of $5.2bn or about 5.5x LTM revenue and 13.8x LTM EBITDA. Wow! We like IDC. They have a strong franchise in the data business for portfolio managers as well as several other market leading businesses. And there’s no question that this transaction is strategic for ICE. ICE will be able to tap into IDC’s wide array of fixed income data…

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Sep 11, 2015

What Summer Slowdown? M&A September Market Update

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It is September. The common wisdom is that after a long, lazy, slow summer at the beach, people are now back at work. The problem with the common wisdom is that often it is only partly true. Yes, the streets are more crowded and it is easier to get meetings. But, it certainly was not a slow summer. In August alone, we saw more than a dozen deals of scale announced in the sectors that we care about, including those below and a raft of others. In spite of concerns about Greece, China, the Middle East and the volatile stock…

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Aug 12, 2015

Can Unique Properties Command Unique Value? Marlin & Associates August Market Update

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We are not big on valuing companies based on “multiples” – be it a multiple of this year’s or last year’s revenue, EBITDA, net income, book value, or any other lone financial metric. The drivers of value are much more complicated than can be reflected by financial multiples. Sector growth rates, competitive positioning, management strength, scarcity value, strategic fit, expected future unit growth rates, profit expansion potential, and a host other factors have significant impact on enterprise value. Nevertheless, we were somewhat nonplussed to see the multiples paid for several recent transactions including McGraw-Hill’s purchase of SNL and Nikkei’s purchase…

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Jul 30, 2015

McGraw Hill Financial To Acquire SNL Financial For $2.2 Billion: M&A Analysis

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Earlier this week, McGraw Hill Financial (“MHFI”) announced its intention to acquire Charlottesville, Virginia-based SNL Financial (“SNL”) for $2.225 billion. The sellers included New Mountain Capital, which acquired 60% of SNL Financial in July 2011, Reid Nagle (founder) and other members of SNL management. We see this as a very strategic transaction for MHFI. SNL Financial has a number of very deep industry specific data sets with accompanying analytics that are unique in the market data sector. SNL began by providing in-depth data related to the U.S. savings and loan industry (hence the name ‘SNL’). The company’s products enabled specific…

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