Global alternative asset manager The Carlyle Group has acquired ITRS Group, a global provider of real-time monitoring systems for the world’s financial institutions, in partnership with its founders and management. Financial terms have not been disclosed.
ITRS is a fast-growing, multi-award winning technology provider, primarily focused on supplying the financial services sector with trading infrastructure monitoring software. The company has over 600 installations worldwide and its clients include 8 of the top 10 global investment banks, and several brokers, exchanges, hedge funds and data vendors. In the year ended March 2011, ITRS generated more than GBP16 million in revenues. The company was formed in 1997. It is headquartered in London, with offices in New York, Hong Kong and Manila.
Carlyle will support ITRS’ international expansion and is committed to broadening of the Company’s specialized product offering. Furthermore, this investment will facilitate ITRS’ diversification and continue to enable clients to be at the forefront of the market’s evolving demand for continuous real-time risk and performance monitoring of trading platforms.
The Company’s core product is “Geneos”, a real-time proactive and predictive monitoring and management, presenting financial institutions with an ultra-high speed overview of their trading environment. It further enables ITRS’ clients to quantify the performance and robustness of an institution’s trading infrastructure at local, regional and global levels. Geneos is therefore able to enhance risk management, minimise latency and reduce the level of trading and reputational risk.
Kevin Covington, CEO of ITRS, says: “We are exceptionally proud of our performance over the past decade, in which time ITRS has been on a rapid growth path driven by our outstanding team. We expect Carlyle’s global resources, international network and sector expertise will help propel us forward as we continue to expand and enhance our product offering for clients.”
Fernando Chueca, Director in Carlyle’s European Technology Partners team (CETP), says: “As financial firms are increasingly challenged by the growing cost and complexity of running high-performance trading infrastructures, and facing the increased regulatory pressure to manage the operational risk of potential systems outages, ITRS is emerging as a truly best-of-breed solution provider for real-time application and infrastructure monitoring. We have been particularly impressed by the high quality of the Geneos platform and the talented management team, and look forward to supporting the continued growth of ITRS.”
Stephen Bates, founder of ITRS, says: “We are very excited about the prospect of working with Carlyle to support Kevin and his management team in growing the business. We are confident that we now have the optimal team to provide a platform for innovation in products and services, and to deliver growth in international and new markets.”
Equity for this investment will come from Carlyle Europe Technology Partners II (CETP II), a EUR530 million fund that closed in November 2008. Since 2002, Carlyle’s European Technology team has invested in 22 companies, supporting their growth, expansion and business transformation initiatives. Recent fund investments in the financial technology sector include: FRS Global, a risk and regulatory compliance software vendor to the financial services industry; Trema, a provider of treasury and asset management software for corporations and financial institutions; and Apama, a platform for complex event processing.
