Actu
Colt deepens its finance sector focus by signing binding agreement to acquire a majority shareholding in MarketPrizm
May 2011 by Marc Jacob
Colt Group S.A. announced it has agreed to acquire a majority stake in MarketPrizm, a leading provider of low latency market data and trading infrastructure services, from Instinet Incorporated. Under the terms of the agreement, there is no initial consideration payable by Colt on the basis that Colt has committed to fund the business through its next phase of growth.
This agreement underscores Colt’s commitment to the financial sector and its vision of being Europe’s leading information delivery platform. The combination of MarketPrizm’s expertise in market data and trading infrastructure services with Colt’s strength in low latency networks, and proximity hosting services will provide the unique foundation necessary to address the increasingly demanding requirements of trading firms. The integration of market data in the Colt portfolio will enable Colt to address the key business drivers of its financial sector customers and moves it deeper into the managed services area. Colt’s expertise in infrastructure and breadth and depth of operations scale will provide the impetus needed for MarketPrizm’s development and expansion into new asset classes and geographies in both EMEA and Asia Pacific.
As a result of the transaction Colt will become the majority shareholder of MarketPrizm with Instinet Incorporated – previously MarketPrizm’s sole shareholder via its Chi-X Global Inc. subsidiary – participating as minority shareholder in the enterprise. MarketPrizm1 has an existing base of financial sector customers, high performance market data feed handling technology and a fully managed low-latency network for trading customers to connect to the key European trading venues.
Under the terms of the agreement, Colt has undertaken to fund the business through its next phase of growth. Accordingly, Colt expects there to be a net impact on reported EBITDA2 of up to €10.0m in 2011 reflecting both the costs of the transaction and funding the business. The business is not expected to have a material capital expenditure requirement.
As a new subsidiary of Colt, MarketPrizm will be led by Tanuja Randery. Ms Randery has been with Colt in a number of senior roles since 2004 and most recently led the Global Business Division. She was previously VP of Strategy at EMC and Associate Partner at McKinsey, the global strategy consulting firm. Ms. Randery will be taking over as CEO from John Lowrey, current CEO of MarketPrizm. Mr Lowrey will continue to provide strategic oversight and will be a member of the MarketPrizm Board.
