Experian Acquires ClarityBlue for £85 million
Monday, 30 January 2006
Experian®, the global information solutions company, announced the acquisition of ClarityBlue, a UK customer management consulting group and provider of bespoke marketing database solutions.
The purchase price is £85m plus a performance related earn-out of up to £15m over three years. ClarityBlue complements Experian’s existing portfolio of marketing information and solutions which enable organisations to make key business decisions about targeting, acquiring and retaining customers.
ClarityBlue exclusively designs, builds and manages marketing database solutions for large organisations with millions of customers who potentially make multiple transactions each day.
Based in Luton, ClarityBlue’s clients include some of the world’s largest financial services providers, entertainment companies, mobile phone operators and Internet Service Providers. Clients include: Barclaycard, Morgan Stanley, BSkyB, O2 and Orange. Founded in 1999, ClarityBlue employs 165 people, primarily in the UK.
ClarityBlue will trade as ‘ClarityBlue, an Experian company’, within Experian’s Marketing Services division and continue to be led by Duncan Painter, Chief Executive Officer of ClarityBlue.
The acquisition of ClarityBlue enhances both companies’ marketing database capabilities. The combination of ClarityBlue’s consulting-based approach and its own unique technology with Experian’s broad marketing data assets and sophisticated analytical solutions will significantly enhance the development and delivery of marketing database solutions for large consumer facing organisations.
Richard Fiddis, Managing Director of Experian UK, Ireland and Northern Europe, stated: “The acquisition of ClarityBlue reflects the strong strategic fit between both organisations and Experian’s strategy of investing in successful, growing companies whose market leadership adds a new dimension to the scope, scale and range of solutions we are able to offer our clients. Together, our marketing database proposition will provide major opportunities for future growth and add significant value to our clients’ businesses by improving the financial return from their customer acquisition and retention campaigns.”
Duncan Painter, CEO of ClarityBlue, added: “As an Experian company, we are looking forward to leveraging the business’ considerable resources to accelerate the growth of ClarityBlue in the UK and overseas. The synergies the two businesses share and the competitive advantages we will offer clients are clear: sector-focussed consulting expertise, with best-of-breed technology and processes, which will be utilised to develop sophisticated marketing database solutions to enable clients to predict and manage future customer behaviour.”
The acquisition of ClarityBlue is consistent with Experian’s global strategy of acquiring complementary businesses that provide new products, new data or entry into new vertical or regional markets, while leveraging the core assets of Experian.