Clearwater Analytics makes private credit tech acquisitions
Clearwater Analytics has announced plans to acquire two private credit technology providers – Beacon and Bistro.
Clearwater will acquire Beacon for an aggregate purchase price of approximately $560m (£433m), 60 per cent of which will be paid in cash. The purchase price for the Bistro software is $125m, of which $10m will be paid in cash.
Beacon is a provider of cross-asset class modelling and risk analytics for derivatives, private credit and debt, structured products and other alternative assets, while Bistro is Blackstone’s proprietary portfolio visualisation software platform which was built for its credit and insurance business.
Clearwater said that these acquisitions will help achieve its goal of building a front-to-back platform that can help the company to expand into new markets and provide financial institutions with a cloud-native, multi-tenant architecture, through an integrated platform rather than fragmented software solutions.
“With this combination, chief investment and chief risk officers will have a unified, real-time view of their entire portfolio – from public equities and private credit to structured products and alternatives – all in a single, cloud-native platform,” said Sandeep Sahai, chief executive at Clearwater Analytics.
“The Clearwater platform will allow them to drill down and comprehensively understand their exposure to a company, industry or geography across all their investments, public and private.
“That will, in turn, allow them to model their entire portfolio, evaluate cash flows and understand risk.”
Earlier this year, Clearwater announced its plans to acquire investment management tech provider Enfusion for $1.5bn to accelerate its growth, and Sahai said that these new acquisitions will complement this offering, giving the industry a true front-to-back platform.
Read more: RSM partners with Arch for tech-enabled private markets investment management
“This is an incredible moment – not just for Beacon, but for the entire industry,” said Kirat Singh, chief executive of Beacon.
“Our platform is already integrated with Clearwater and Enfusion at many of our shared clients, delivering best-in-class risk, performance and pre-trade functionality.
“By bringing these platforms together, along with Blackstone’s Bistro, we’re creating something truly industry-leading – giving institutional investors complete transparency across front office, pre-trade, risk and accounting.
“We believe no one else can offer this level of depth, and I couldn’t be more excited for what’s ahead.”
Read more: Increase in dealmaking expected for 2025
“Technology is critical to everything we do, including how we interface with key investors who are broadening their exposure to private credit assets,” added John Stecher, chief technology officer at Blackstone.
“We built the Bistro platform to address a need we saw in the market both for ourselves and our clients to have a more advanced credit portfolio insights platform.
“Clearwater has an exciting opportunity to continue evolving this core infrastructure platform for the credit asset management industry and we look forward to helping them build something that creates enduring value.”
Following the completion of the deal, the Clearwater platform will utilise a single security master and a unified data plane across all asset classes, business functions, and clients – including portfolio modelling, pre-trade compliance, trade execution, risk and performance management, accounting, post-trade compliance, and regulatory reporting. This will allow institutional investors such as insurers and asset owners to access a fully integrated technology stack for investment management that combines pre-trade, post-trade and risk all in one platform.
For asset managers in particular, the new offering will eliminate inefficiencies in managing private credit, real estate debt, structured products and alternative investments, Clearwater added.
“These transactions bring the critical IP needed to build a disruptive, end-to-end platform for the investment management industry,” added Sahai.
“Integrating these platforms into a single, seamless solution will require intense focus and execution over the next year or two, but I’m confident in our ability to deliver. As we complete this work, we expect our customers to be completely delighted.”
Read more: Challenger and specialist lenders overtake banks for SME finance
