B2B information. Warburg Pincus private equity has acquired a controlling stake in Reorg Research, a bankruptcy analysis and deal intelligence start-up. The deal is rumoured to value Reorg — which expects 2018 operating profit of some $20m — at between $375m to $400m. In just five years, the privately-owned, US-based Reorg Research has become a leading information provider on distressed debt and leveraged finance. It’s a clever mix of tech that scrapes legal filings along with analysis and original reporting from a 100-strong team of journalists, former lawyers and bankers in the US and UK. Reorg publishes 50-100 articles per day, and has nearly 500 subscribers who pay annual fees averaging some $100k to learn what their experts find online or by working the phones. Research data is hot. The Reorg deal coincides with the Hearst-owned Fitch Group’s acquisition of Fulcrum Financial Data, a rival distressed-debt service (in MediaDeals this week). In 2017, BC Partners sold a 30% stake in the 18-year-old Acuris, publisher of Debtwire and Mergermarket, for almost the same as the £380m price it had paid Pearson for the whole company just three years before. Blackstone private equity is currently buying a 55% stake in Thomson Reuters Financial & Risk for $17bn in a deal which will split the news service from the financial and risk business which had been brought together in the 2008 merger of Reuters and Thomson Corp.
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Warburg Pincus buys control of $400m Reorg Research
