Wolters Kluwer is to acquire Brussels-based regulatory reporting group FRSGlobal from PE investors Carlyle and Kennet Partners.
This acquisition comes on the heels of the landmark Basel III agreement setting new capital adequacy rules for financial institutions, and just a week after IBMK announced a similar deal to take over regulatory reporting and compliance outfit OpenPages.
Brian Longe, chief executive officer of Wolters Kluwer Financial & Compliance Services says the addition of FRSGlobal creates the world's largest compliance and risk management business focused on financial services, with more than 15,000 banking, insurance and securities customers across the globe.
"Together, FRSGlobal and Wolters Kluwer Financial Services will be able to provide global financial organisations with the most comprehensive compliance and risk management solutions available," he says.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Carlyle and Kennet are understood to have made a decent return on their original investment in FRSGlobal in 2006.
During this time, the company recruited Steve Husk as CEO, Serge Minne as CFO and Michael Laven as chairman, completed the acquisitions of Iris Integrated Risk Management and Secam+, and significantly expanded the company's presence in Asia and the US.
Michael Wand, managing director and co-head of Carlyle's European Technology Partners team (CETP), says: "This achievement with FRSGlobal is a great endorsement of our original investment thesis of transforming a traditional software license business into a value-enhancing subscription-based recurring revenue model, based on strong domain expertise and content orientation."
Both Husk and Minne will join Wolters Kluwer and will continue to lead FRSGlobal.