The Carlyle Group has Acquired ITRS Group, a Provider of Trade Monitoring Technology and Services to the Financial Services Sector

LONDON, Sept. 26, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Global alternative asset manager The Carlyle Group ("Carlyle") announced today that it has acquired ITRS Group ("ITRS" or the "Company"), a global provider of real-time monitoring systems for the world's financial institutions, in partnership with its founders and management. The transaction closed today. Financial terms were not disclosed.

ITRS is a fast-growing, multi-award winning technology provider, primarily focused on supplying the financial services sector with trading infrastructure monitoring software. The company has over 600 installations worldwide and its clients include 8 of the top 10 global investment banks, and several brokers, exchanges, hedge funds and data vendors. In the year ended March 2011, ITRS generated more than £16 million in revenues. The company was formed in 1997 by Stephen Bates and Misha Kipnis. It is headquartered in London, with offices in New York, Hong Kong and Manila.

Carlyle will support ITRS' international expansion and is committed to broadening of the Company's specialized product offering. Furthermore, this investment will facilitate ITRS' diversification and continue to enable clients to be at the forefront of the market's evolving demand for continuous real-time risk and performance monitoring of trading platforms.

The Company's core product is "Geneos". Geneos enables real-time proactive and predictive monitoring and management, presenting financial institutions with an ultra-high speed overview of their trading environment. It further enables ITRS' clients to quantify the performance and robustness of an institution's trading infrastructure at local, regional and global levels. Geneos is therefore able to enhance risk management, minimise latency and reduce the level of trading and reputational risk.

Kevin Covington, CEO of ITRS said: "We are exceptionally proud of our performance over the past decade, in which time ITRS has been on a rapid growth path driven by our outstanding team.  We expect Carlyle's global resources, international network and sector expertise will help propel us forward as we continue to expand and enhance our product offering for clients."

Fernando Chueca, Director in Carlyle's European Technology Partners team (CETP), said: "As financial firms are increasingly challenged by the growing cost and complexity of running high-performance trading infrastructures, and facing the increased regulatory pressure to manage the operational risk of potential systems outages, ITRS is emerging as a truly best-of-breed solution provider for real-time application and infrastructure monitoring. We have been particularly impressed by the high quality of the Geneos platform and the talented management team, and look forward to supporting the continued growth of ITRS."

Stephen Bates, co-founder of ITRS, said: "We are very excited about the prospect of working with Carlyle to support Kevin and his management team in growing the business. We are confident that we now have the optimal team to provide a platform for innovation in products and services, and to deliver growth in international and new markets."

Equity for this investment will come from Carlyle Europe Technology Partners II (CETP II), a €530 million fund that closed in November 2008. Since 2002, Carlyle's European Technology team has invested in 22 companies, supporting their growth, expansion and business transformation initiatives. Recent fund investments in the financial technology sector include: FRS Global, a risk and regulatory compliance software vendor to the financial services industry; Trema, a provider of treasury and asset management software for corporations and financial institutions; and Apama, a platform for complex event processing.

Notes to Editors

Advisors

Corporate Finance: Arma Partners

Legal: DLA Piper

Financial & Tax: Alvarez & Marsal

Commercial: Tabb Group

About The Carlyle Group

The Carlyle Group is a global alternative asset manager with approximately $153 billion of assets under management across 86 funds and 49 fund of fund vehicles (as of June 30, 2011)(1). Carlyle invests across four segments - Corporate Private Equity, Real Assets, Global Market Strategies and Fund of Funds Solutions - in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, the Middle East, North America and South America focusing on aerospace, defense, & government services, consumer & retail, energy, financial services, healthcare, industrial, technology & business services, telecommunications & media and transportation. The Carlyle Group employs more than 1,100 people in 34 offices across 6 continents.

For more information visit http://www.carlyle.com;

for case studies: http://www.carlylegroupcreatesvalue.com.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/OneCarlyle.

About ITRS Group

ITRS Group is the leading provider of risk mitigation solutions to global financial institutions. It leads the way in a new discipline which extends real-time monitoring into a comprehensive operational and service management solution. Providing innovative businesses with the visibility necessary to identify, analyse and mitigate risk, ITRS Group has been recognised through industry awards for its innovation and customer support. ITRS's products are specifically designed to reduce service disruption, improve IT efficiency, and ensure that critical operational processes are executed as planned, protecting against both business reputation and trading risks.

ITRS delivers proactive, predictive real-time monitoring and management with specialist interfaces for over 100 key third-party trading and risk applications, including core financial market trading applications, services and execution venues - a prerequisite for effective system control. A unified view and full visibility of complex environments is provided through the Geneos dashboard, giving a complete end-to-end view of all systems. Disparate data is aggregated, creating a single source of actionable business intelligence, giving the ability to predict and act to prevent problems, enhancing risk management and minimising latency, all at ultra-high speeds.

Established in 1997, ITRS has offices in London, New York and Hong Kong supporting clients worldwide including banks, brokers, exchanges, hedge funds and data vendors. ITRS has over 600 Geneos installations, implemented in 60 leading financial institutions, including eight of the top ten global investment banks.

For more information visit http://www.itrsgroup.com or email [email protected]

Press contacts :
The Carlyle Group
Rosanna Konarzewski
Tel:  +44(0)207-894-1632
Email:  [email protected]

ITRS Group:
John Norris
Moonlight Media Ltd.
Tel:  +44(0)20-7250-4770
Email:  [email protected]

(1) Note:  Includes acquisitions of AlpInvest Partners B.V. and Emerging Sovereign Group LLC on July 1, 2011.

SOURCE The Carlyle Group and ITRS Group