Press release: RELX Group announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the entire issued share capital of ThreatMetrix, for a consideration of £580m payable in cash.
ThreatMetrix is a leader in the global risk-based authentication sector, headquartered in San Jose, California and founded in 2005. ThreatMetrix’s technology analyses connections among devices, locations, anonymised identity information and threat intelligence, and combines this data with behavioural analytics to identify high-risk digital behaviour and transactions in real time.
ThreatMetrix has strong client relationships across financial services, e-commerce, and media sectors and offers authentication solutions for account origination, payments, “card not present” transactions and account logins.
ThreatMetrix’s Digital Identity Network analyses over 100 million transactions per day across 35,000 websites from 5,000 customers. This makes it the one of the largest repositories of online digital identities in the world, encompassing 1.4 billion unique online identities from 4.5 billion devices in 185 countries.
ThreatMetrix will become part of Risk & Business Analytics, which under the LexisNexis Risk Solutions brand addresses fraud and authentication challenges by applying advanced analytics to physical identity attributes, including identity credentials, addresses and asset ownership.
LexisNexis Risk Solutions already has an established commercial partnership with ThreatMetrix, including ThreatMetrix’s device intelligence solutions in its Risk Defense Platform. Further integration of ThreatMetrix’s capabilities in device, email and social intelligence will build a more complete picture of risk in today’s global, mobile digital economy, providing both physical and digital identity solutions.
Risk & Business Analytics CEO, Mark Kelsey, said: “ThreatMetrix is widely recognised as a leader in the digital identity space. Bringing that together with our own strengths in physical identity attributes will give our clients across all forms of commerce and geographies a more reliable, comprehensive approach to fraud and identity risk management while maintaining the privacy and security principles our customers have come to expect. The acquisition is in line with our organic growth driven strategy, supported by acquisitions of targeted data sets and analytics that are natural additions to our existing business.”
Reed Taussig, President and CEO of ThreatMetrix, said: “Our partnership with LexisNexis Risk Solutions over the past two years has fully demonstrated the strong synergies between our two organizations. The benefits our shared customers have realized from the integration of our respective products are unmatched in the industry. Over the past ten years the ThreatMetrix team has pioneered the digital identity space, and by combining the strength of LexisNexis Risk Solutions and ThreatMetrix into a single business, our customers, partners, and employees will benefit with a unique and compelling market opportunity.”
The transaction is subject to customary conditions and regulatory consents and is expected to close during the first half of 2018. It is not expected to have a material impact on 2018 RELX Group earnings.
In 2017, RELX Group completed eight acquisitions for a total consideration of £123m, and disposed of 17 assets for a total of £87m. This compares to an average acquisition spend in the previous five years of approximately £300m per annum.