GIC, Hellman & Friedman to buy Allfunds Bank, valued at 1.8b euros

SINGAPORE'S sovereign wealth fund GIC and affiliates of Hellman & Friedman, a private equity investor, on Tuesday announced the signing of a deal to acquire Allfunds Bank, a global financial technology business.

They are buying it from Intesa Sanpaolo Group, Santander Group, General Atlantic and Warburg Pincus. The deal values Allfunds at 1.8 billion euros (S$2.7 billion).

Allfunds offers integrated technology-based solutions to asset managers and distributors of mutual funds. The company provides a range of operational, analytic and information services supporting the mutual fund distribution activities of over 530 institutional clients, including commercial banks, private banks and insurance companies from 38 different countries.

Allfunds also has a global network of offices across Europe, Asia and Latin America and over 265 billion euros assets under administration globally covering 51,000 funds from 541 fund managers.

Henry Ormond, head of direct investments group for Europe at GIC Private Equity, said: "As a long-term value investor, GIC is confident in Allfunds' scalable business model based on its leading European market platform, diversified customer base and long-term contracts. We believe the company, supported by our partnership with Hellman & Friedman, will grow to be the global market leader in the fund management industry."

Barclays and Citibank acted as financial advisers to Hellman & Friedman and GIC on the transaction.

Freshfields and Ropes and Gray acted as legal counsel to Hellman & Friedman, and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett acted as legal counsel to GIC.