Private equity firm Inflexion has launched the sale of Chambers & Partners, a global provider of legal rankings, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
Sellside advisor Harris Williams, which was appointed last year to explore sale options, has begun distributing information memoranda (IMs) to prospective bidders, the sources said.
The company is expected to be marketed off FY23 EBITDA of up to GBP 30m (EUR 35m), according to two of the sources. In the fiscal year ending June 2022, the company generated adjusted EBITDA of GBP 15.2m, up from GBP 12.9m in the same period the year before, according to company filings. Its revenues grew 22% to GBP 42.6m in that same year from GBP 24.8m in FY21.
Chambers & Partners has a score of 30 out of maximum 100, according to Mergermarket's Likely to Exit (LTE) predictive algorithm*, driven partly by the average number of sponsor exits in the same region over a six-month period and the volume of Mergermarket intelligence on the company.
Founded in 1990, Chambers & Partners publishes a wide array of specialist rankings that help corporates to select legal advisers. It also supports marketing and outreach of individual lawyers and their firms.
Inflexion acquired a majority stake in the company in 2018 at undisclosed terms, as previously reported.
Barings is an incumbent lender to Chambers & Partners, having provided a direct loan to the firm in March 2021 that facilitated a dividend recap by Inflexion.
Information services has seen a boon for buyout activity in recent months. In July, financial data and intelligence provider With Intelligence was sold to Motive Partners by Intermediate Capital Group (ICG) [LON:ICP], and Sweden-based Macrobond was sold to Francisco Partners at a reported valuation of close to EUR 700m in the same month.
A representative for Inflexion declined to comment. Harris Williams and Chambers & Partners did not respond to requests for comment.
*Mergermarket's LTE predictive analytics assign a score to sponsor-backed companies to help track and predict when an exit could occur through M&A, an IPO, a direct listing or a deSPAC transaction.
