Allen & Overy offloads risk management business to private equity firms
Magic circle firm Allen & Overy is selling off the majority of its legal risk management business to private equity firms.
The deal for Aosphere involves London-based private equity firm Inflexion making “a strategic investment” via its Partnership Capital II fund alongside Endicott Capital, a US-based investor.
The view for Inflexion and Endicott’s ownership of Aosphere is to create a scaled, global regulatory data business across a range of cross-jurisdictional topics, particularly with the aim of growing the business in the US.
Speaking in a statement on the deal, David Whileman, partner and head of partnership capital at Inflexion, said: “The sector is one we’ve tracked for some time as heightened regulatory scrutiny and complexity have led to growing demand for efficiency and thus outsourcing in legal spend.”
A&O’s wholly owned affiliate Aosphere was created by the firm in 2002 to provide a legal and compliance data subscription. The firm grew the business to have more than 40 professionals across London, New York, Adelaide, Belfast, Germany and Dubai. The CEO of Aosphere is Marc-Henri Chamay, who was also one of the co-founders of the business.
The deal will see the business become a stand-alone entity with A&O retaining a minority stake.
The news comes after Allen & Overy and Shearman & Sterling approved its highly anticipated merger earlier this month as 99 per cent of the votes cast at each firm were in favour. The merger will see nearly 4,000 lawyers and 800 partners across 48 offices come together with combined revenues of approximately $3.5bn.
It is understood by someone close to the deal that the move to sell Aosphere was not a direct result of the firm’s merger with Shearman & Sterling but the merger did accelerate it.