Leadership Newsletter Spring 2021
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Leadership Newsletter Spring 2021 GTCR Firm Update Since GTCR’s founding in 1980, the firm has pursued the strategy of partnering with exceptional Financial Services & Technology management teams to build and transform growth businesses. GTCR has invested over $20 billion in more than 250 companies during this period. In November 2020, we closed GTCR Fund XIII, with 25+ 240+ PLATFORMS ADD-ONS $7.5 billion of limited partner capital commitments. GTCR Fund XIII is the largest investment fund $ in the firm’s history and will support the firm’s 25B long-tenured investment team and management PURCHASE partners in pursuing attractive platform and add-on PRICE investment opportunities across a wide range of transaction values. To date, GTCR has announced four new platform acquisitions in Fund XIII, Acquisition Activity Since 2000 including the pending investment in Wells Fargo As of March 1, 2021* Asset Management. This fund follows GTCR Fund XII, which we raised in 2017, with $5.25 billion of limited partner capital commitments. GTCR Fund XII is comprised of 13 portfolio companies, including three Financial Services & Technology (“FS&T”) platforms: AssuredPartners, CAPTRUST and Ultimus Fund Solutions. Page 1 / Continues on next page Financial Services & Technology Group Update Since 2000, GTCR has made more than 25 financial services and technology platform investments and over 240 add-on acquisitions for an aggregate purchase price of $25 billion, including $5 billion of GTCR capital. The FS&T group has stayed very active over the past year despite the unprecedented environment. In February 2021, GTCR announced that, together with Reverence Capital Partners, it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire Wells Fargo Asset Management (“WFAM”), a leading asset management platform, in a corporate carve-out transaction from Wells Fargo & Company for $2.1 billion. We are enthusiastic to partner with new Executive Chairman Joseph Sullivan (former Chairman and CEO of Legg Mason) and current CEO Nico Marais to transition WFAM to a standalone business and accelerate growth through ongoing product innovation and investments in enhanced distribution and technology capabilities. The company will be re-branded upon the closing of the transaction, which is expected to occur in the third quarter of 2021 following the receipt of regulatory approval and contractual consents. In June 2020, GTCR completed its minority investment in CAPTRUST, one of the largest independent retirement plan and wealth advisory businesses in the US. We partnered with CEO and founder Fielding Miller to accelerate organic growth and pursue accretive M&A. CAPTRUST, like our insurance brokerage platform AssuredPartners, has a focused acquisition strategy and has successfully acquired and integrated 47 acquisitions in its history. Since our initial investment in June, CAPTRUST has completed six add-on acquisitions and maintains a robust pipeline of future opportunities. In addition to the two new platform investments, we have maintained our focus on completing add-on acquisitions through our existing platforms. AssuredPartners has continued to execute on its disciplined acquisition strategy with 49 new acquisitions over the past 12 months. RevSpring, our healthcare billing and payments platform, acquired Loyale Healthcare in February 2020 to enhance its payments capabilities and o¤erings. Paya, our integrated payments platform, acquired The Payments Group, a provider of government and utility billing and payments solutions, in October 2020. CAPTRUST completed six acquisitions during GTCR’s short ownership period and has built an attractive pipeline of future opportunities. Finally, we continue to pursue global registered and private fund administration acquisitions at Ultimus after acquiring and integrating LeverPoint, a leading North American private fund administrator, in late 2019. The FS&T group also recently executed realizations of our highly successful investments in Optimal Blue and Paya. In September 2020, GTCR sold Optimal Blue, operator of the residential mortgage industry’s leading digital marketplace, to Black Knight (NYSE: BKI) for $1.8 billion in cash consideration. In October 2020, GTCR merged Paya with FinTech Acquisition Corp. III to become a publicly listed company (NASDAQ: PAYA). The transaction valued Paya at an enterprise value of $1.3 billion. Importantly, the transaction created significant near-term proceeds for existing shareholders while allowing GTCR to continue as the largest shareholder of Paya going forward. The Optimal Blue and Paya transactions reflect the value created through our multi-year partnerships with excellent management teams to transform both businesses under GTCR’s ownership. We have detailed both investments below as case study examples of our Leaders Strategy ™ in action and our focus on driving di¤erentiated outcomes by partnering with exceptional leaders, embracing complexity and e¤ecting strategic transformations. Page 2 / Continues on next page FS&T Investment Case Study: Optimal Blue GTCR partnered with industry veteran Scott Happ to transform Optimal Blue into the residential mortgage industry’s leading digital marketplace. GTCR partnered with industry veteran Scott Happ, founder and former CEO of Mortgagebot, to acquire Optimal Blue in July 2016. Leading up to the acquisition, GTCR and Scott developed a thesis to build a digital marketplace at the center of the $4 trillion mortgage issuance industry. We identified Optimal Blue, the operator of the leading product and pricing engine for the mortgage industry, as a unique platform to execute on this thesis. The company’s strong position in its segment with a large and underpenetrated addressable market was a characteristic shared by several past GTCR investments. We developed strong conviction that Optimal Blue’s position at the intersection of mortgage investors and originators provided a platform o¤ which the company could develop a broader marketplace and deliver additional information and services to the mortgage industry. Under Scott’s leadership, the company executed a significant transformation to reposition itself from a mortgage technology point solution to an open, real-time, cloud-based marketplace operator positioned at the center of the mortgage market. While repositioning the business, GTCR and Scott assembled an industry-leading management team to enhance the technology platform, professionalize operations, optimize sales execution and invest in product development and innovation. The company added incremental capabilities and functionality to broaden its core product o¤erings and developed new o¤erings in compliance, data analytics and mortgage insurance distribution to expand the reach and relevance of its network. The company also completed three acquisitions to add complementary capabilities and expand its client base to support its organic expansion e¤orts. Today, Optimal Blue operates the residential mortgage industry’s leading digital marketplace, connecting approximately 3,500 mortgage lenders and brokers with 185 mortgage investors through a unique digital network that facilitates approximately $2 trillion of transactions annually. In addition to facilitating commerce between mortgage originators and investors, Optimal Blue also supports a broader ecosystem of secondary marketplace participants who leverage Optimal Blue’s network and data assets to improve their own products and service o¤erings. GTCR successfully realized its investment in Optimal Blue in September 2020 with its sale to Black Knight (NYSE: BKI). The transaction valued Optimal Blue at an enterprise value of $1.8 billion, which reflected the company’s high rate of growth in subscription revenues and profits and its strategic value at the nexus of the growing digital mortgage industry. Page 3 / Continues on next page FS&T Investment Case Study: Paya GTCR transformed Paya into a leading integrated payments platform after completing a successful carve-out from The Sage Group plc. GTCR combined its long successful history of investing in payments companies and strong expertise in corporate carve-outs in its acquisition of Paya (formerly known as Sage Payment Solutions) from The Sage Group plc (“Sage”, LSE:SGE) in August 2017. Leading up to the acquisition, GTCR had determined that the integrated payments segment, in which payments capabilities are integrated and sold with software solutions, was poised for outsized growth given the value-added nature of the technology based o¤ering. As GTCR pursued this thesis, it identified Paya as an attractive but undermanaged business given a lack of recent investment in technology and go-to-market operations. Using The Leaders Strategy™ approach to investing, GTCR carved out Paya for a purchase price of $260 million. In the three years following the acquisition, GTCR recruited an entirely new management team, completed a successful carve-out from Sage, rebranded the company to Paya, invested in new technology and product capabilities and executed three highly strategic acquisitions. GTCR and Paya also accelerated the go-to-market strategy, with an emphasis on partnering with software companies that cater to attractive end markets characterized by their strong secular growth, low penetration of electronic payments and non-cyclical nature, such as B2B accounting, faith-based and non-profit, government and utilities, healthcare and education. Altogether, these actions drove an improved growth profile and enhanced Paya’s competitive position as a unique integrated