General Atlantic, Hg and IHS Markit aim to strengthen Gen II’s suite of solutions, supporting a growing customer base and generating further strategic growth
New York, New York, USA and London, UK. 6 November 2020: Gen II Fund Services, LLC (“Gen II”), a leading independent private equity fund administrator, announced today that it has secured a new strategic investment. General Atlantic (“GA”), a leading global growth equity firm, and Hg, a leading global software investor, together will lead the investment. IHS Markit (NYSE: INFO), a world leader in critical information, analytics and solutions, will also make a minority investment in the company. Cobepa S.A will continue to hold a minority position. The Gen II founders and management team will continue to hold a significant investment in Gen II whilst continuing to lead the business.
The terms of the transaction were not disclosed and closing of the transaction is conditional on customary anti-trust and regulatory approvals.
Led by its three original co-founders – Steven Millner, Steven Alecia and Norman Leben – since 2009, Gen II is a leading pure-play provider of alternative asset fund administration services. With headquarters in New York, New York and Luxembourg and serving a global client base, the company administers over $375 billion of private capital on behalf of its clients across more than 500 funds and their 25,000 investors, spanning various investment strategies including Buyout, Infrastructure, Energy, Real Estate, Fund of Funds, Credit, and Retail.
Gen II is differentiated by providing a leading, tech-enabled platform offering a high-touch, premium service to its clients in fund administration, accounting, reporting and regulatory compliance. Mr. Millner, Mr. Alecia and Mr. Leben have built a strong team providing an industry-leading experience to the Firm’s clients, which has led to consistent, uninterrupted double-digit organic growth over the last 10 years.
“We are excited to partner with General Atlantic, Hg and IHS Markit to make Gen II even stronger. Our new investors each bring game-changing expertise to our Firm and our clients. General Atlantic brings 40 years of global growth equity investing and will be superb advisors as we expand our capabilities and reach. Hg, the largest software investor in Europe, brings deep software and service business intelligence that we will leverage to help refine our products. And IHS Markit, developers of WSO Software and iLevel, brings technology, analytics, and product expertise that will help us transform the features and performance of our platform. This is a powerhouse combination.”
Steven Millner, Steven Alecia and Norman Leben, co-founders of Gen II
“We are thrilled to partner with Gen II in its next phase of growth. Under the leadership of Steven, Steven and Norman, the business has become a critical player across the full fund lifecycle of the alternative asset ecosystem. We see significant potential to help drive market expansion across a growing global base of GPs and their investors.”
Gabriel Caillaux, Co-President, Managing Director and Head of EMEA at General Atlantic
“Gen II’s embedded, quality solutions drive real value for its customers, demonstrated by the momentum of the business over the past decade. We look forward to leveraging General Atlantic’s deep expertise in financial technology, alongside that of Hg and IHS Markit, to further augment and expand its integrated technology platform.”
Aaron Goldman, Managing Director and Global Co-Head of Financial Services at General Atlantic
“Today Hg is investing in a very strong business, which has built a differentiated profile to become the platform-of-choice for its industry. In line with the management team’s ambition, we see potential to scale further, both across the sector and across geographies. Hg has invested over $2 billion into wealth & capital markets as well as compliance services and technology platforms to date and we are looking forward to using this expertise to continue Gen II’s success together with our partners.”
Thorsten Toepfer, Partner at Hg
“We have actively followed the fund administration space for several years and during this time we’ve seen Gen II build a reputation as one of the most respected alternative asset administration tech platforms in the industry. The founders have been right at the heart of this the whole way and it is truly impressive what they and their team have achieved. Alongside them, and our new investment partners, we look forward to bringing our experience in fintech to see what we can achieve together.”
Joris Van Gool, Partner at Hg
”Through its innovation and value-added solutions, Gen II is a leader in fund administration for alternative assets. Given our growth strategy and commitment to enabling the success of private capital markets, we are pleased to invest additional resources with GA, Hg and the Gen II leadership team to further support our global GP and LP clients.”
Adam Kansler, President of Financial Services at IHS Markit
Advising the buy side on the transaction were HPS (debt financing), Skadden and Paul Weiss (legal), Raymond James (M&A), Linklaters (debt legal), PWC and EY (financial due diligence, tax and structuring), Bain (commercial due diligence) and Validus (FX). Baird advised on the transaction as part of the sell side.
