Bowmark Capital backs buy-out of Pirum from Five Arrows Principal Investments

Founded in 2000, Pirum provides a secure, centralised automation and connectivity hub for global securities finance transactions, enabling complete automation of the post-trade and collateral lifecycle. The company delivers its services over a fully hosted, multi-tenanted SaaS platform to over 120 market participants, processing over $2 trillion of trades and collateral daily. Pirum’s services provide them with greater efficiency, reduced operational risk and improved profitability.

Pirum has delivered annual revenue growth of 20 per cent over the past three years, and its services were recently recognised in the Global Investor/ISF 2018 industry awards, in which it won seven out of the eight categories in Post-Trade Technology Services and all eight categories in Software Solutions. Most recently, Pirum has developed a new reporting and compliance solution, in partnership with IHS Markit, to address the upcoming Securities Financing Transaction Regulation.

Rajen Sheth, Pirum’s CEO, commented: “It has been a pleasure for my colleagues and I to have worked closely with the Five Arrows team under whose stewardship we have accelerated our record of new product development and solidified our position of technology leadership. This is a really exciting time for Pirum and I am delighted to be teaming up with Bowmark as we progress to the next phase of our development. We look forward to continuing our tradition of innovation and service excellence to help our clients exploit the opportunities and navigate the challenges of an ever-changing market place.”

Bowmark managing partner Julian Masters commented: “Twelve years of uninterrupted revenue growth is a great testament to Pirum’s management team. Having known the company since 2011, we are delighted to be backing Rajen and his colleagues as they capitalise on the significant opportunities opened up by continued product innovation and regulatory change. We are also delighted to be working with Pirum’s chairman, Donal Smith, and its founder and non-executive director, Rupert Perry, both of whom will continue in their current roles. Previously, Donal was chief executive of Data Explorers when it was backed by Bowmark.”

Javed Khan, co-managing partner of Five Arrows Principal Investments, said: “Pirum has all the virtues of the type of business we proactively target: a mission-critical offering with a record of creating tangible value for its customers through thoughtful use of technology. It has been a privilege for us to work with Rajen, Donal and Rupert over the past four years during which time Pirum has extended its real-time product into collateral and exposure management as well as compliance reporting. We wish the management team and the new owners the best for the next stage of the company’s evolution.”

Houlihan Lokey acted as exclusive M&A sell-side advisor to shareholders and management in this transaction.