Singapore's sovereign wealth fund is in talks to acquire a large stake in a market intelligence and data company, shortly after dumping a billion-dollar stake in Swiss bank UBS.
In a statement on its website the Singapore fund says «Funds advised by BC Partners, a leading private equity firm, have reached an agreement to sell a circa 30 percent stake in the Mergermarket Group to GIC.»
GIC has valued the whole group, a former unit of The Financial Times Group (FT), at about 1 billion pounds. Following the transaction, BC Partners will continue to hold over a 60 percent stake in Mergermarket.
Background
BC Partners bought the subscription-based news service from Pearson in an estimated 380 million pound deal in 2013, before the education firm decided to part ways with the FT in 2015 to focus solely on its core education business.
The financial news and data firm claims to currently have 190,000 subscribers and the largest team of dedicated M&A journalists and analysts in the world.
It was founded in 2000 and has expanded to 67 locations across the United States, Europe, Asia and the Middle East, its offering has also developed from a single focus on mergers and acquisitions news to specialised information in life sciences.
UBS Dumped
In May 2017 Zurich-based UBS said GIC had sold down its stake in the Swiss bank to less than 3 percent. Singapore's sovereign wealth fund said it had swallowed a loss after selling down a crisis-era investment in UBS.
In a statement at the time the fund said «GIC is disappointed that the UBS investment resulted in a loss.»
