Intermediate Capital Group (ICG) has acquired a leading provider of legal business information for £650m, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
The FTSE 100 private equity fund manager has bought Law Business Research from Levine Leichtman Capital Partners, a Los Angeles-based buyout firm. The deal closed last week and has yet to be formally announced.
Law Business Research was started in 1996 by Richard Davey, Callum Campbell and Sebastian O’Meara, a former BBC journalist. The company publishes legal magazines and rankings and organizes events for lawyers around the world.
Swoop: Intermediate Capital Group has acquired a leading provider of legal business information for £650 million
It was bought by London-based Bowmark Capital in 2013, which then sold it to Leichtman in 2017. Bowmark managing partner Kevin Grassby said: “Good legal businesses are in high demand in London. “There have been many agreements in this information space.”
Last year, Reuters acquired legal technology research firm Casetext for £520m, while private equity firm Inflexion sold legal classification specialist Chambers and Partners to US investment group Abry Partners for around £400m.
A source close to the ICG deal added: ‘This space is on fire right now. The Square Mile is the legal capital of the world.
It is the latest deal for ICG, whose shares have soared 54 percent in the past year, boosted by investors hungry for access to the private equity sector.