Succeeding with technology spin-outs
Technology drives many businesses, yet it can often be overlooked within large organisations. Inflexion’s experience in identifying high-potential units and carving them out to pursue their ambitions has fostered a number of success stories.
Business units can go from good to great when released from the larger entities they are part of. With teams often energised by independence, carve-outs can unleash ambition capable of driving stellar results.
Inflexion has extensive experience in executing carve-outs from both public and private owners, consistently unlocking ambition and accelerating growth. Importantly, this doesn’t have to mean relinquishing control; Inflexion is supporting a growing number of minority strategic partnerships to drive value.
Aosphere In 2023 magic circle law firm Allen & Overy (A&O) partnered with Inflexion’s Partnership Capital fund and US-based investor Endicott Capital to carve-out its data business, aosphere. Since then, revenues have grown at double digits, a new vertical in crypto was launched, and a strategic acquisition was completed.
Times Higher Education The university rankings business is continuing its global expansion, with six acquisitions since Inflexion acquired the business in 2019 propelling its journey.
Curinos Curinos was created by Inflexion’s Partnership Capital and Informa plc when they brought together Informa Financial Intelligence’s Financial Benchmarking & Omnichannel Experience (FBX) business and Novantas Inc.
Giacom The software platform business demerged from Daisy Group with minority funding from Inflexion’s Partnership Capital. The company’s revenues have grown consistently at over 10% per annum since the demerger.
GlobalData Healthcare In 2023 Inflexion partnered with GlobalData Plc to carve out its largest division as a standalone entity in a transaction valuing the business at £1.1 billion. GlobalData was able to retain a majority stake in the business as it works with Inflexion to accelerate organic growth and pursue selective M&A.
Inflexion has a proven track record in effecting carve-outs and supporting their growth as an independent entity.
Aosphere
In 2023 Inflexion’s Partnership Capital led as a strategic partnership with Allen & Overy (A&O), a magic circle law firm, and Endicott, a US financial sponsor to grow aosphere, legal and compliance data subscription platform. The transaction enabled A&O to retain a significant stake in aosphere, the business it created in 2002, with Inflexion chosen for its proven success in supporting corporate carve-outs and data businesses. Its track record of extricating systems and building standalone new ones means aosphere’s leadership team can continue to focus on its day-to-day business and look ahead to future growth as an independent entity providing clients with the most comprehensive, reliable, and user-friendly legal and regulatory information and services.
And grow it has, with revenues growing at double-digits despite the transition, an acquisition completed and a new vertical launched for crypto. The acquisition was significant, enabling aosphere to enter the private banking and wealth management space through the acquisition of Switzerland-based BRP Bizzozero. Says CEO Marc-Henri Chamay: “We’d never have managed this sort of purchase before independence. It had been on our radar for years, operating in parallel to us, then it came to market shortly after our transaction, so it took priority over other goals. Inflexion were very supportive when the opportunity came up.”
Aosphere serves over 1,300 clients including banks, asset managers and corporates, providing online legal analysis on a subscription basis across a range of key compliance topics in complex areas such as financial derivatives, shareholder disclosure requirements, cross-border marketing, and data privacy.
Generative AI is a major area of investment for aosphere now, with its new AI tool allowing users to ask a natural-language question and receive an instant, clear answer, backed by data and references. A focus on accuracy meant selecting the right AI tools was not trivial. Inflexion helped by introducing specialists, including a highly experienced consultant who had worked successfully with another Inflexion portfolio company.
Following the launch of crypto shortly after the transaction, the business is about to enter another vertical with the launch of a cross-border lending product for the private credit market. More acquisitions may complement the organic efforts, and double-digit revenue growth is driven by a c. 50% increase in clients.
Times Higher Education
The university rankings business had grown impressively under its parent TES Global but was ripe to grow faster and so in 2019 underwent an Inflexion-led buyout. Inflexion has helped THE to accelerate its global expansion, utilising experts in the US and Asia, while the in-house digital team are assisting with enhancing the company’s digital presence and our commercial team is supporting the evolving go-to-market strategy.
Since acquiring THE, Inflexion has supported the business with six acquisitions including Inside Higher Ed in the US and is actively working with the company on additional opportunities. The company has also shifted focus under Inflexion’s stewardship to be more about data and insight, serving universities’ C-suites and now governments to gain insight, benchmark and more.
In 2024 THE was recognised by the King’s Awards for Enterprise, among the most prestigious business awards in the UK, reflecting its impressive international growth. THE now reaches 700 customers in 85 countries with its rankings including over 4,900 universities voluntarily participating from 143 countries, making it the most comprehensive and authoritative university ranking system globally.
Curinos
In 2021, FTSE 100 business Informa PLC chose to work with Inflexion Partnership Capital to create a market-leading financial data and technology provider by bringing together two complementary businesses: Informa Financial Intelligence’s Financial Benchmarking & Omnichannel Experience (FBX) and Novantas Inc, a financial data services company. The business rebranded as Curinos, with the carve-out and subsequent integration creating a financial data and technology leader.
The team are working alongside Inflexion and Informa to great effect to launch new products and invest in sales to drive adoption of outsourced analytics. Inflexion’s expertise in scaling data businesses as well as strong US network are incredibly valuable for Curinos’s ongoing journey, with Inflexion’s digital team supporting the creation of a unified data fabric to support product integration and boost cross-selling, Inflexion’s in-house talent team have helped build out the management bench to underpin accelerated growth, supporting the appointments of a CFO, CRO, CTO and CHRO.
The opportunity ahead is exciting as the banking industry is on the cusp of a new era of mass personalisation. Financial institutions increasingly understand that a positive customer experience matters, and Curinos believes that personalising it allows for greater flexibility with the value proposition.
This belief is driving the business’s strategy, and Curinos is utilising AI to support its offering to help banks drive better user experiences with more frequent and tailored engagements with their customers.
“The corporate partnership enabled us to achieve what we wanted strategically and unlock value too,” enthuses Stuart Poyser, M&A Director of Informa.
Giacom
Giacom (formerly DWS) is a high growth software platform business providing IT, communications and cloud products and services on a wholesale basis to over 6,000 UK partners, from vendors including Vodafone, O2, BT/EE, Microsoft, and Virgin Media Business. In 2021, Inflexion provided a minority investment from its Partnership Capital Fund to support Giacom’s demerger from its parent Daisy Group. With the founder and management shareholders reinvesting 90% of proceeds, both Inflexion and ongoing management are big believers of its future success.
Inflexion appointed an experienced consultancy to get to know the entire exec team to identify strengths and gaps, leading to the appointment of a very experienced CFO and a Chief Digital Officer to own Giacom’s platform strategy, and an NED brought in from Inflexion’s network.
Inflexion’s Digital team has helped road-map the technical debt removal from the platform and supported the creation of a data team, which has helped Giacom to differentiate pricing and boost bespoke selling.
The hard work is paying off: the company’s results since the demerger saw its revenues grow consistently at >10% per annum with all of its key product lines achieving double digit revenue growth.
The firm is also growing through M&A, including the purchase of prominent UK Microsoft cloud services provider intY from US-based ScanSource at the end of 2023. The transaction marked Giacom’s third acquisition and reinforced Giacom’s position as the largest and most technically proficient provider of Microsoft licensing to the SMB-focused UK channel by further scaling Giacom’s Microsoft cloud capabilities. In late 2024 the business acquired Inform Billing, a provider of billing solutions for resellers and MSPs, strategically expanding Giacom’s Cloud Market Tools.
GlobalData Healthcare
At the end of 2023 Inflexion partnered with GlobalData Plc to carve out its Healthcare division as a standalone entity in a transaction valuing the business at £1.1 billion. The data business is the largest division of GlobalData, listed on London’s AIM, and employs over 1,000 people across 10 countries. Its subscription service offers a one-stop data solution for over 2,000 global customers across large global pharma, pharma & biotech, pharma suppliers, professional services and medical devices manufacturers.
This transaction allowed GlobalData to retain a majority stake in the business as it works with Inflexion to accelerate organic growth primarily through securing new clients globally and further cross-selling to existing clients, continuing to invest in AI, product and content, as well as pursuing selective M&A.
Mike Danson, CEO and largest shareholder of Global Data plc said, “The investment highlights the significant value in our unique data platform and gives us the flexibility to launch a more ambitious approach to growth investment across our portfolio.” A part of this plan is leveraging AI. A focus since 2023, this is helping GlobalData to enhance customer experience, streamline data production, improve internal efficiencies, and develop predictive capabilities. The firm is integrating natural language interfaces to enable clients to access complex pharmaceutical data through conversational queries, facilitating tailored insights.
M&A is also playing a role, and the beginning of 2025 saw GlobalData acquire Deallus, a competitive intelligence solutions provider focused on the global life sciences sector. The first acquisition since the Inflexion-led carve-out should help GlobalData to build more embedded relationships with its clients and create opportunities to cross-sell and upsell to new and existing clients.
The acquisition was one of four for GlobalData plc since Inflexion’s investment, helping boost its full-year results with 5% growth in both revenues and EBITDA and margins maintained at an impressive 41%.
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