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Finance used to be governed by knowledge, networks and nous. Now, the red-hot commodity in the space is data — increasingly available and increasingly valued by the investment community. That has sparked an arms race among data providers, which are rushing to snap each other up.
All this helps explain why Preqin, the UK-based provider of private markets data, has put itself on the block at a £1bn-plus valuation. This is just the most recent example of a wave of consolidation that has included megadeals such as S&P’s $44bn acquisition of IHS Markit in 2020 and LSEG’s $27bn purchase of Refinitiv, plus a slew of smaller bolt-on acquisitions.
Data on private markets — hard to come by and valuable for deep-pocketed customers — has been a particular hotspot, with giants such as Morningstar, BlackRock and MSCI all bringing specialised providers in-house.
It is not hard to see why big data groups are on the acquisition trail. Their customers want more product. Buying a competitor with a different pool and customer base creates cross-selling opportunities. Better still, they can crunch the different data sets and specialisms together to create new lines of business. It would not be inconceivable for S&P Global, reportedly looking at Preqin, to have some sort of a private equity index at the back of its mind.
There is some urgency to this scramble: data is expected to become more valuable still. As large language models (LLMs) take off, a key differentiator will be the ability to feed and train them on high-quality proprietary data. That gives giant providers, with the money to invest in LLMs, an incentive to stock up.
As well as benefiting from the data boom, Preqin piggybacks on a market that has seen extraordinary growth, with private assets rising to more than $14tn. Its revenues have grown by a compound annual 24 per cent in the three years to 2022. That makes its £1bn price tag — 7.5 times 2022 turnover — look broadly reasonable. MSCI valued Burgiss at 10 times previous year revenues, thinks Russell Quelch at Redburn, while Morningstar bought credit-focused LCD at 11.6 times.
All this may be reason enough for Preqin founder Mark O’Hare to pursue a sale. Yet it is striking that those closest to the private equity world are cashing out now, as the sector enters a tougher phase in its existence. Investors considering their allocations may take note.
*This story has been amended after publication to reflect S&P Global’s reported interest in Preqin