A consortium led by CITIC Capital Holdings’ private equity arm and Caixin Global has agreed to a full exit from its investment in ISI Emerging Markets Group (ISI) through a sale to Montagu, a leading European private equity firm. Completion of the sale is expected next month, subject to customary closing requirements.
ISI Emerging Markets Group is a leading provider of critical, hard-to-obtain macroeconomic, company and industry digital intelligence for the emerging markets. Subsequent to the carve-out from Euromoney Institutional Investor Plc in 2018 led by CITIC Capital and Caixin Global, the two brands CEIC and EMIS, were successfully integrated under ISI Emerging Markets Group, providing access to 220 million pieces of content from over 6,000 high-quality sources and available in over 15 languages to customers across the globe.
Yichen ZHANG, Chairman & CEO of CITIC Capital, says: “We are delighted to have supported ISI’s management team through a period of strong financial performance and organisational development. During our investment, we worked closely with the team to continue to expand ISI’s technology capabilities, product offering and organisation, and to deliver robust growth in its subscription numbers, revenue and profitability. With the support from CITIC Capital and Caixin Global, the company also expanded its sales network and enhanced its data coverage, particularly in the rapidly growing China market. ISI has successfully built a resilient business as proven in the global pandemic environment.
“ISI is another great example of how we unlock value in carve-out deals. Having completed seven carve-outs in recent years, we moved quickly to fully integrate and realize significant synergies between the CEIC and EMIS businesses. We believe the company is well on track to deliver significant future growth.”
HU Shuli, Chairwoman of Caixin Global, says: “In the changing world and amid China’s opening of its capital markets, Caixin is devoted to building a financial information and data platform based in China with global impact. Our cooperation with ISI during this time has been effective, particularly as we have brought CEIC deeper into the Chinese market, and brought new opportunities for its development and operation on mobile platforms. We will continue to keep working with ISI and develop the good relationship. Meanwhile, Caixin will continue investing and empowering global data and research institutions.”
ISI, alongside Focus Media, Omnivision and UCO, is one of the TMT companies invested in by CITIC Capital Partners. These companies have outperformed despite the pandemic. CITIC Capital believes that this space is one of the most active and exciting sectors in China, and will continue to invest in and to focus on opportunities in this area.
