Two private-equity firms have agreed to back data-integrity business Precisely in a $3.5 billion deal, people familiar with the situation said, banking on the growth and importance of trusted data.
Once closed, the deal will result in private-equity firms TA Associates and Clearlake Capital Group—which was already a minority investor in Precisely—taking control of the business from Centerbridge Partners. Centerbridge, which acquired a majority stake in Precisely from Clearlake in 2017, will remain a minority investor.
Precisely, whose legal name is Syncsort Inc., has about 12,000 customers including major banks, large telecommunications companies, healthcare and retail businesses, and the government, according to Chief Executive Josh Rogers.
The Pearl River, N.Y., business traces its origins to 1968, when it launched as Syncsort. Entering the data-integration market later on, the company helped clients extract data from older computer systems and make it available for analytics applications, a transition it described as “Big Iron to Big Data.”
Since that time, Precisely has focused on data integrity—collecting and honing in on the accuracy of particular bits of data, such as demographics, location boundaries and the dynamic weather in a given area. It offers products specializing in integrating data, assuring the data’s quality, enriching data files and providing location intelligence.
