Colt deepens its finance sector focus by signing binding agreement to acquire a majority shareholding in MarketPrizm
Published by Make Do on May 4, 2011
4 May 2011
Colt Group S.A. today announced it has agreed to acquire a majority stake in MarketPrizm, a leading provider of low latency market data and trading infrastructure services, from Instinet Incorporated. Under the terms of the agreement, there is no initial consideration payable by Colt on the basis that Colt has committed to fund the business through its next phase of growth.
This agreement underscores Colt’s commitment to the financial sector and its vision of being Europe’s leading information delivery platform. The combination of MarketPrizm’s expertise in market data and trading infrastructure services with Colt’s strength in low latency networks, and proximity hosting services will provide the unique foundation necessary to address the increasingly demanding requirements of trading firms. The integration of market data in the Colt portfolio will enable Colt to address the key business drivers of its financial sector customers and moves it deeper into the managed services area. Colt’s expertise in infrastructure and breadth and depth of operations scale will provide the impetus needed for MarketPrizm’s development and expansion into new asset classes and geographies in both EMEA and Asia Pacific.
As a result of the transaction Colt will become the majority shareholder of MarketPrizm with Instinet Incorporated – previously MarketPrizm’s sole shareholder via its Chi-X Global Inc. subsidiary – participating as minority shareholder in the enterprise. MarketPrizm1 has an existing base of financial sector customers, high performance market data feed handling technology and a fully managed low-latency network for trading customers to connect to the key European trading venues.
Under the terms of the agreement, Colt has undertaken to fund the business through its next phase of growth. Accordingly, Colt expects there to be a net impact on reported EBITDA2 of up to €10.0m in 2011 reflecting both the costs of the transaction and funding the business. The business is not expected to have a material capital expenditure requirement.
As a new subsidiary of Colt, MarketPrizm will be led by Tanuja Randery. Ms Randery has been with Colt in a number of senior roles since 2004 and most recently led the Global Business Division. She was previously VP of Strategy at EMC and Associate Partner at McKinsey, the global strategy consulting firm. Ms. Randery will be taking over as CEO from John Lowrey, current CEO of MarketPrizm. Mr Lowrey will continue to provide strategic oversight and will be a member of the MarketPrizm Board.
Colt CEO, Rakesh Bhasin said: “Providing market data and trading infrastructure services is a natural step for Colt as we pursue our vision of becoming Europe’s leading information delivery platform. With our strong existing financial services customer base, this transaction will extend Colt’s finance sector capability and presence and create new opportunities to provide trade execution services to clients in equities and other asset classes in Europe and Asia. We are also very pleased that we will be working with Nomura to extend our current customer relationship to the MarketPrizm services for market data, connectivity and hosting in EMEA and Asia.”
Fumiki Kondo, Instinet Incorporated co-CEO and Chi-X Global Chairman, said: “We welcome Colt’s investment in the MarketPrizm business. Colt’s core knowledge and expertise of networks and data centres, combined with MarketPrizm’s robust trading infrastructure offering, should make MarketPrizm an even more compelling offering for firms looking to trade the rapidly evolving European and Asian markets.”
Notes to editors:
1The value of the gross assets of MarketPrizm as at 31 December 2010, subject to completion of an IFRS fair value accounting review at the acquisition date, was €3m.
2 EBITDA is profit for the year before net finance costs, tax, depreciation, amortisation, foreign exchange and exceptional items.
About Colt
Colt is Europe’s leading information delivery platform, enabling its customers to deliver, share, process and store their vital business information. An established leader in delivering integrated computing and network services to major organisations, midsized businesses and wholesale customers, Colt operates a 21-country, 33,000km network that includes metropolitan area networks in 38 major European cities with direct fibre connections into 17,000 buildings and 19 Colt data centres.
In 2010, the Colt Data Centre Services business was launched to deliver innovative high quality modular data centres which are rapid to deploy and power efficient. Colt is listed on the London Stock Exchange (COLT). Information about Colt and its services can be found at www.colt.net.
About MarketPrizm
MarketPrizm is a low latency trading comprehensive infrastructure delivered as a service, designed to provide authorized trading venue members and broker-sponsored firms a convenient, cost effective technology platform for accessing the European marketplace. The service comprises high speed connectivity to the trading venues in the UK and Europe from colocated data centres in the region, as well as market data, hosting options, third party applications and full service and support. MarketPrizm today successfully provides financial institutions with a low latency market data and trading infrastructure for accessing 17+ market venues in EMEA.
For more information, please contact:
Press contact
Colt, Paul Osgood
DDI: +44 (0) 20 7863 5015
Mobile: +44 (0) 7855 301 078
Email: [email protected]
Press contact
Weber Shandwick, Emma Hedges
DDI: +44 (0) 20 7067 0512
Mobile: + 44 (0) 7957 174 504
Email: [email protected]
Financial analysts’ contact
Colt, Gill Maclean
DDI: +44 (0) 20 7863 5314
Mobile: +44 (0) 7739 285 200
Email: [email protected]
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